Joe Rogan’s character on Newsradio stated it well:

Dude, you can’t take something off the Internet… that’s like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.

A high-profile case has again proven that point. In February 2007 the AACS processing key was disclosed. This key allows copy protection to be broken on HD-DVD and BlueRay media produced before April 23. The AACS is backed by heavyweights like IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Panasonic, Sony, Disney and WB. They took an aggressive stance to have the content containing the key removed from the Internet. They sent cease and desist notices, and shut down sites that didn’t comply.

Enter Digg. Their first reaction was not to wage battle with the AACS, and they removed the content as requested. Digg CEO Jay Adelson, “Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law.” That response only fueled the fire, and by late yesterday, the democratic Digg frontpage was filled with HD-DVD stories and comments that included the forbidden key. The site administrators couldn’t keep up, and the site was even unavailable for a time.

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Dino Dai Zovi, the New York-based security researcher who took home $10,000 in a highly-publicized MacBook Pro hijack on April 20, has stated in an interview that he thinks Vista is more secure than OSX.

From your research on both platforms, is there a winner between Mac OS X 10.4 and Vista on security?

I have found the code quality, at least in terms of security, to be much better overall in Vista than Mac OS X 10.4. It is obvious from observing affected components in security patches that Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) has resulted in fewer vulnerabilities in newly-written code. I hope that more software vendors follow their lead in developing proactive software security development methodologies.

Contest winner: Vista more secure than Mac OS [MacWorld]

As if dismal PlayStation3 sales weren’t bad enough, Sony recently threw a party in Greece to celebrate the launch of a new Playstation2 title, God of War II. According to reports, this party featured topless women feeding grapes to people in the crowd, and a beheaded goat. While Sony claims the goat was from a local butcher, and returned after the party, it has animal rights activists up in arms.

In addition to the beheaded goat, participants were also invited to dine on goat entrails, and contents of the goat’s stomach, in a reality game show like atmosphere. Sony later explained it was actually a meat soup provided by a local caterer.

Sony has launched an internal investigation, the company said in a statement.

“The goat was returned to the butcher,” Sony said. “On this occasion we recognize that we fell short of our normal high standards of conduct.”

Sony offers goat sacrifice to ‘God of War’ [NewsBlog]

Respected security researcher Joanna Rutkowska promises to reveal new rootkit techniques for Vista, and ways to defeat it’s BitLocker drive encryption. On her blog she notes there will be a training session for “legitimate companies” during the Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas, in late July.

As the training will be focused on Windows platform and Vista x64 specifically, we will also present some new kernel attacks against latest Vista x64 builds. These attacks, of course, work on the fly and do not require system reboot and are not afraid of the TPM/Bitlocker protection. (Although they could also be used to bypass Vista DRM protection, this subject will not be discussed during the training)

Understanding Stealth Malware [invisiblethings]

Dell said they asked consumers for feedback regarding a Linux distribution, and Ubuntu was the overwhelming favorite (followed closely by OpenOffice). Ubunto 7.0.4 will soon be offered and supported (now even on Dell forums) on consumer models. This in addition to RedHat that has been offered for some time to enterprise customers.

Dell promised to listen better to it’s customers, and lunched it’s IdeaStorm website to solicit feedback. Offering a Linux operating system quickly dominated the requests, and many wondered whether Dell had the resources and desire to support Linux. Not to mention offend partners like Microsoft. It appears they are. Kudos to Dell.

Ideas in Action [Dell]