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Crime

+ - 174 The latest craze? High-voltage fences promise to zap would-be copper thieves -> 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "It may be a gimmick or maybe the ultimate answer, but a California city this week Ok'd a draft ordinance that would let businesses install 7,000 volt electric fences to protect sites from rampant copper thieves. As reported by the Sacramento CBS station, the reaction form one business owner to the ordinance says it all: "It'll be a little fun to watch one of these guys get electrocuted holding my fence trying to rob me.""
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EU

+ - 194 Climate change evident across Europe, says report->

Submitted by Dupple
Dupple writes "Following on from a world bank report of 4 degree C warmer world, comes this story from the BBC

The effects of climate change are already evident in Europe and the situation is set to get worse, the European Environment Agency has warned.

"Every indicator we have in terms of giving us an early warning of climate change and increasing vulnerability is giving us a very strong signal," observed EEA executive director Jacqueline McGlade."
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NASA

+ - 138 NASA Working on Getting Rid of the "New Satellite" Smell->

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes "NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is working to eliminate new car smell. No, they aren't a bunch of killjoys. That distinctive odor is caused by outgassing of chemicals used in car manufacturing. Some scientists believe these gases to be harmful, but whether they are or not, satellites suffer from the same problem. The gases released by satellites themselves can damage them, so NASA is working on new ways to control or eliminate these emissions."
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Iphone

+ - 173 AT&T enables FaceTime over cellular for all, including unlimited data users->

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes "When AT&T announced earlier this year that it would support FaceTime video calling on Apple’s iPhone over cellular data connections only for those customers who switched to new shared data plans, people were not happy. The backlash came fast and furious, and some advocacy groups questioned whether or not the new policy was legal. AT&T eventually buckled under the pressure and said users with any tiered data plan and an LTE-enabled device would be able to use FaceTime over cellular. The move was seen as a big step in the right direction, but AT&T confirmed that the many iPhone users with grandfathered unlimited data plans still would not be able to make FaceTime calls over cellular connections. As it turns out, however, AT&T may have quietly reversed that decision as well..."
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Technology

+ - 209 Bionic Mannequins Spy on Shoppers to Boost Luxury Sales->

Submitted by SternisheFan
SternisheFan writes "Benetton Group SpA is among fashion brands deploying mannequins equipped with technology used to identify criminals at airports to watch over shoppers in their stores. Retailers are introducing the EyeSee, sold by Italian mannequin maker Almax SpA, to glean data on customers much as online merchants are able to do. The 4,000-euro ($5,072) device has spurred shops to adjust window displays, store layouts and promotions to keep consumers walking in the door and spending.
    The EyeSee looks ordinary enough on the outside, with its slender polystyrene frame, blank face and improbable pose. Inside, it’s no dummy. A camera embedded in one eye feeds data into facial-recognition software like that used by police. It logs the age, gender, and race of passers-by. Demand for the device shows how retailers are turning to technology to help personalize their offers as growth slows in the $245 billion luxury goods industry. Bain & Co. predicts the luxury market will expand 5 percent in 2012, less than half last year’s rate.
    “It’s a changing landscape but we’re always going to be sensitive about respecting the customer’s boundaries,” said spokesman Colin Johnson. Others say profiling customers raises legal and ethical issues. U.S. and European Union regulations permit the use of cameras for security purposes, though retailers need to put up signs in their stores warning customers they may be filmed. Watching people solely for commercial gain may break the rules and could be viewed as gathering personal data without consent, says Christopher Mesnooh, a partner at law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse in Paris. “If you go on Facebook, before you start the registration process, you can see exactly what information they are going to collect and what they’re going to do with it,” said Mesnooh. “If you’re walking into a store, where’s the choice?” So far Almax hasn’t faced obstacles to selling the dummy, CEO Catanese said. Since the EyeSee doesn’t store any images, retailers can use it as long as they have a closed-circuit television license, he said."
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Hardware Hacking

+ - 159 Entries open for first ever 24-hour Raspberry Pi hackathon->

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes "Called the Raspberry Pi “hack day”, the competition will pit 100 entrants against one another in a number of categories using only the board, Internet access, soldering irons and as much coding as they think appropriate.

Participants will have 24-hours to complete projects, at the end of which judges will category winners will be awarded from a variety of prizes including camcorders, Android tablets and the geek must-have, the Hubsan H107 Quadcopter."
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Piracy

+ - 224 Microsoft accidentally gifts pirates with a free Windows 8 Pro license key-> 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes "In an amusing twist that undoubtedly spells the end of some hapless manager’s career, Microsoft has accidentally gifted pirates with a free, fully-functioning Windows 8 license key. As you have probably surmised, this isn’t intentional — Microsoft hasn’t suddenly decided to give pirates an early Christmas present (though the $40 upgrade deal from Windows 8 Release Preview is something of a pirate amnesty). In fact, it’s probably just a case of poor testing and a rushed release by Microsoft. The bug involves the Key Management Service, which is part of Microsoft's Volume Licensing system. Pirates have already hacked the KMS to activate Windows 8 for 180 days — but this is just a partial activation. Now it turns out that the free Media Center Pack license keys that Microsoft is giving out until January 31 2013 can be used on a KMS-activated copy of Windows 8 to turn it into a fully licensed copy of Windows 8 Pro. The massive irony, of course, is that Microsoft originally intended to strip Media Center from Windows 8 Pro — and then, in the face of consumer backlash, decided to offer it as a free upgrade until January 31 2013. Presumably, instead of taking the time to deliver the upgrade properly, Microsoft pushed it out the door as quickly as possible — and this is the result."
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Science

+ - 150 Making Sense Of Colors And Shapes In The Toilet->

Submitted by mjjochen
mjjochen writes "Just in time for the big American eating festival known as Thanksgiving, comes this NPR story on the shape and color of our bodily waste products. Discussion on the color, shape, smell, & even taste are included. Now we can have just as much fun analyzing things after the meal as we did consuming the meal — for the scatologically inclined, read on!

"Here at Shots, we're all for "breaking the taboo around the toilet" (see our recent posts on squatting and fake feces). And we get the sense that there's more confusion out there about what ends up in the toilet than most people would care to admit. And so for World Toilet Day, we're sharing a couple of infographics we stumbled upon recently.""
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Linux

+ - 154 Jolla mobile set to launch it's Sailfish OS today-> 1

Submitted by zzats
zzats writes "The Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Jolla, started by ex-Nokia Meego engineers, is showing it's Linux-based Sailfish OS for the public for the first time today. The first (supposedly generic) keynote speech is scheduled to air 9:15 GMT, with an UI-focused presentation starting later, 15:00 GMT. In addition to using the OS on their own devices, Jolla is planning to license it to third party manufacturers. The company has previously stated their initial focus for creating an ecosystem is in the Chinese market."
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Microsoft

+ - 198 Microsoft Banned GPLv3 From UEFI Secure Boot Solutions->

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes "Microsoft may have attracted some headlines and discussion on Slashdot for being a 'sponsor' at the Linux Foundation's Europe event LinuxCon. But this sponsor is not giving the Linux Foundation any special treatment when it comes to UEFI Secure boot. The Foundation's James Bottomley says how challenging the process is and they are still waiting for Microsoft's response to get the signed bootloader. Some key findings are:
1. Microsoft has banned GPLv3 and similar licences to be used in bootloader
2. There are some agreements that you have to sign with Microsoft with go beyond UEFI. These can be problematic."
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Operating Systems

+ - 186 The Linux Foundation's UEFI Secure Boot Pre-bootloader Delayed->

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes "The Linux Foundation’s plans of releasing a signed pre-bootloader that will enable users to install Linux alongside Windows 8 systems with UEFI have been reportedly delayed. TLF proposed a signed pre-bootloader that will chain-load a bootloader which in turn will boot the desired operating system thus keeping Linux installations for novice users as simple as it were before. Further, this particular component is meant for small-time Linux distros which otherwise wouldn’t have the required expertise or resources to develop their own system to tackle the secure boot issue. This was going as per plans up until James Bottomley, Parallels’ CTO disclosed that he has been having rather bizarre experiences with Microsoft sysdev centre. Bottomley, when asked about the status of the project, told Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of ZDNet, "We're all done and dusted with the signed contract with Microsoft and the binary ready to release. However, I've been having bizarre experiences with the Microsoft sysdev centre.""
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Google

+ - 228 Google releases raw election polling results->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Last week, Nate Silver ranked Google Consumer Surveys as one of the most accurate polling firms of the 2012 US election. This week, Google has released the raw data that went into its election-day prediction, and is running a contest for interesting visualizations of that data. They provide a few examples of their own, including a WebGL globe view."
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Transportation

+ - 346 With Pot Legal, Scientists Study Detection of Impaired Drivers

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "A recent assessment by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, based on random roadside checks, found that 16.3% of all drivers nationwide at night were on various legal and illegal impairing drugs, half them high on marijuana. Now AP reports that with marijuana soon legal under state laws in Washington and Colorado, setting a standard comparable to blood-alcohol limits has sparked intense disagreement because unlike portable breath tests for alcohol, there's no easily available way to determine whether someone is impaired from recent pot use and if scientists can't tell someone how much marijuana it will take for him or her to test over the threshold, how is the average pot user supposed to know? "We've had decades of studies and experience with alcohol," says Washington State Patrol spokesman Dan Coon. "Marijuana is new, so it's going to take some time to figure out how the courts and prosecutors are going to handle it." Driving within three hours of smoking pot is associated with a near doubling of the risk of fatal crashes. However, THC can remain in blood and saliva for highly variable times after the last use of the drug. Although the marijuana “high” only lasts three to five hours, studies of heavy users in a locked hospital ward showed THC can be detected in the blood up to a week after they are abstinent, and the outer limit of detection time in saliva tests is not known. "A lot of effort has gone into the study of drugged driving and marijuana, because that is the most prevalent drug, but we are not nearly to the point where we are with alcohol," says Jeffrey P. Michael, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's impaired-driving director. "We don't know what level of marijuana impairs a driver.""
Privacy

+ - 193 That was fast, Leahy scuttles his warrantless e-mail surveillance bill->

Submitted by
Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes "Under the right conditions, online activism can be very effective. Leahy scuttles his warrantless e-mail surveillance bill

Sen. Patrick Leahy has abandoned his controversial proposal that would grant government agencies more surveillance power — including warrantless access to Americans' e-mail accounts — than they possess under current law.

"
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If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it will always do it. -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin

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