IBGerm

Pennsylvania: College students John Wagner and Leslie Pope have been arrested and charged with theft after they declined to pay a mandatory gratuity to the Lehigh Pub after they were given poor service.

The pair had to go to the bar for drink refills, get their own cutlery and napk ins, and wait an hour for the pub to serve their wings and salad. The menu states that an 18 percent gratuity is mandatory for parties over six.

"You can’t give us terrible, terrible service and expect a tip," said Pope, who conceded in answer to a media question that if it happened again he’s "probably gonna pay the tip anyway."

A pub owner in the U.K. has been fined £8,000 (about $13,183) because someone unlawfully downloaded copyrighted material over its open Wi-Fi hotspot, according to the managing director of hotspot provider The Cloud. 

Graham Cove told CNET sister site ZDNet UK on Friday he believes the case to be the first of its kind in the U.K. However, he would not identify the pub concerned, because its owner–a pub that is a client of The Cloud’s–had not yet given their permission for the case to be publicized.

Cove would say only that the fine had been levied in a civil case, brought about by a rights holder, "sometime this summer." The Cloud’s pubco clients include Fullers, Greene King, Marsdens, Scottish & Newcastle, Mitchell & Butlers, and Punch Taverns.

The law surrounding open Wi-Fi networks and the liability of those running them is a grey area…

I’ve been using INTERNET EXPLORER 8 for awhile now. I’ve found a very annoying feature MICROSOFT has decided to embedded into its Internet Explorer browser. The uses of accelerators as they call it. Everything I highlighted, I received this stupid blue arrow icon. I went to the Internet Explorer tools and disabled all the “accelerators ”, but still have this stupid blue arrow. I’ve found the fix… 

Open the Control Panel -> Click on the Internet Options icon -> Click on the Advanced tab. (See screenshot below)

To Turn Off Display Accelerator Button on Selection -Uncheck the Display Accelerator button on selection box, then click on OK. (See screenshot below step 3)

*****Update***** It appears I may have a slight mis-step on this…..

its not control panel.. its.. tools (at the top of the internet explorer page)then internet options then advanced–then uncheck display Accelerator. (thank you for the fix)…. I hope this helps.

IDG News Service – Social networking sites MySpace and Facebook have apparently fixed coding errors that could have allowed an attacker access to all of their users’ data and photos.

The simple coding errors are alarming considering the extent to which social networks have gone to reassure their users that their data will be safe. The problem involved the way the sites handle requests for data from other domains, known as the "cross-domain policy."

Sites such as MySpace and Facebook typically block other domains from requesting and receiving data for privacy reasons, except for their own vetted  subdomains.

Facebook disallowed access from other applications on its main domain, but a developer in the Netherlands, Yvo Schaap, found that Facebook would allow data to be given out from one of its subdomains. 

Since the subdomain also hosted all of Facebook’s data, it would be possible to steal data by luring a victim to a URL with a Flash application rigged to grab the data if the victim had their auto-login enabled, which most people do, according to Schaap’s blog.

A "more invasive and hidden exploit could harvest all the user’s personal photos, data and messages to a central server without any trace, and there is no reason why this wouldn’t be happening already with both Facebook and MySpace data," Schaap wrote on his blog.

He also found the problem on MySpace, which allowed a domain called "farm.sproutbuilder.com" to access data. A Flash application could be uploaded to that site, which would then be allowed access to the data if a victim visited a malicious URL.

MySpace disagreed with the severity of the error, saying it would have only exposed information that was already public. The problem was with the sproutbuilder domain, and it has since been fixed, a spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement.

"No public MySpace data was exposed and the vulnerability was never exploited," the statement read.

A look at Facebook’s latest crossdomain.xml file shows that the bug appears to have been fixed. MySpace also appears to have taken "farm.sproutbuilder.com" out of its cross-domain list.

In an e-mailed statement, Facebook said it "worked with the researcher who identified this issue to fix it. We have not received any reports that it was ever exploited."

Sales of Windows 7, the newest offering in the Microsoft line, are 234% higher in the same period in their release than Windows Vista was. Profitability for the product, however, is only 82 percent higher.    

Microsoft has been pushing Windows 7 Home, with its lowest price point, as the successor to Vista, considered by many to be less than successful. Microsoft’s goal is to have Windows 7 do what Vista failed to do: replace its aging Windows XP.

That city deal to take on Google’s free email services as a cost-cutting measure will actually cost the taxpayers $1.5 million more next year than if City Hall would have stayed with its old email system.

In what seems like bizarre math, Google competitor Novell points out that the cost of training employees and migrating the city’s thousands of workers to Gmail will cost an additional $1.5 mil. Indeed, the city is actually paying out $.7.2 million as part of a deal with Computer Sciences Corp. to help employees migrate to the Google services. It’s apparently more than the cost of maintaining its old email system.
Novell, which was bidding to take of city email services, is mad: "With the City facing a massive budget deficit, the speculated budget benefits of switching to th is untested application are enticing, but as a recent independent Los Angeles City Administrative Officer report has stated, the proposed system under consideration will actually cost taxpayers an additional $1.5 million in the first year. There are significant costs to migrating, training and securing Google Apps."

The question is, who needs to be trained how to use Gm ail? The city can probably save money on the Google service in the long run after its employees have been "trained," but still, it seems strange that, at a time when the city faces $100 million budget shortfall and possible future deficits that could be higher, we’re paying an extra $1.5 million to use free email.