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Submission + - Police Conduction "Operation Wardrive" (kvue.com) 1

yamamushi writes: "Since when has it been law enforcements responsibility to scan for open wireless networks, and then contact the owners of those networks warning them to close them? As far as I have been able to determine, this is the first time in the US that a law enforcement agency has attempted to do this, and although the courts have generally ruled that running an open wireless network waves your expectation of privacy, it feels like this is setting an extremely bad precedent for law enforcement going forward from here. The AustinEFF has filed an Open Records request against APD (Austin Police Department) for information on the details behind this operation, http://effaustin.org/2011/09/austin-police-department-announces-operation-wardrive/ . My primary concern is, at what point in time does your SSID give probable cause for an officer to connect to your network to conduct a search for "illegal" content? Though the EFF's concerns are more varied than my own at this point."

Comment Fair Warning (Score 2, Interesting) 100

These drives have actually been on the market for well over a year now, and I was (un)lucky enough to pick one up last year when my local Fry's Electronics got them in stock. While the drives themselves are handy because of the amount of data you can squeeze into them, making my macbook pro a beast of a mobile studio (at the time I was using it for music production), they seem to be prone to issues. The first drive lasted about a month, before I almost lost several weeks worth of a project I was working on due to the drive crashing. I was able to retrieve my work from the drive by mounting it externally before it became completely unreadable, and I attribute this to the high density drives not being able to handle the average bouncing around of a laptop in a backpack. When I attached the drive to one of my linux workstations, I could hear the disks spinning up but dmesg wouldn't pick up the drive and they just kept spinning endlessly louder and louder. The second drive lasted about 2 months before a similar problem occurred, though by that time I had migrated most of my work to a different workstation. I replaced the drive with the original 500gb drive my macbook came with, and I haven't had any problems since. In short, I'm not sure if the early drives off the assembly line were just prone to failure more often or if perhaps I was just extremely unlucky with the ones I procured. Either way, I am rather uncomfortable about putting any important data on one of these drives in the future until they've been on the market for a while and have been thoroughly tested.

Comment Should have stayed relevant (Score 5, Insightful) 240

Ministry of Sound has been struggling a lot lately, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/21/ministry-of-sound-threat . They haven't really stayed relevant in the electronic music world lately, so it won't be a big loss to see them disappear in the near future irregardless of file sharers. As a music producer and dj here in Austin, I feel obligated to buy the music I play and remix (mainly because I'm friends with producers who've burned that unspoken respect into my style, Francis Preve, Josh Gabriel, etc.). When labels go out of their way to pursue file sharers, I feel obligated to go out of my way to find their tracks through non-conventional methods. Not everyone has money to dish out for music, but they will pay to go to shows, clubs, raves, etc. Let them appreciate the art! When was the last time Ministry of Sound put out a track that reached the top 10 charts on beatport.com ? When was the last time Toolroom Knights did? Music evolves, and it feels like they pressed the B button to hold themselves back on purpose.

Comment Well what does the director have to say about it? (Score 5, Informative) 294

This is rather stupid, considering the director of Downfall watches them and likes them. In fact, in his own words "I think I've seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I'm laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn't get a better compliment as a director." http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/01/the_director_of_downfall_on_al.html

Comment Re:Could be a half-decent toy, if priced well (Score 1) 112

Compared to the costs of getting all the components for the OpenEEG and piecing everything together, it's probably a better choice for most people to go with the Emotiv set. Besides, if you're not happy with an OpenEEG you only have yourself to be unhappy with, if you're bored with the Emotiv you can always send it back and demand a refund.

Submission + - Founder of Milw0rm exploits website is dead (blogspot.com) 1

msuiche writes: Matt Suiche writes
Milw0rm was well-know as an exploits database. We can read on Blacksecurity blog: I've just received information that str0ke @ milw0rm has passed away due to cardiac arrest early this morning at 9:23 AM.[..]RIP str0ke 1974-04-29 — 2009-11-03 09:23

Linux

Submission + - Linux torrents get a mention in landmark court cas (computerworld.com.au) 1

swandives writes: The Federal Court of Australia has heard how peer-to-peer software, BitTorrent, is used to distribute Linux-based operating systems. Downloading GNU Linux software was cited as one of the legal uses of BitTorrent during the landmark court case between internet service provider, iiNet, and the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT). iiNet CEO, Michael Malone, took the stand for his third successive day of cross examination in the civil case. AFACT barrister, Tony Bannon SC, questioned Malone about the amount of BitTorrent traffic Linux downloads were likely to account for.

Submission + - Twitter movement stops Mexican government (bbc.co.uk)

KamuZ writes: The Mexican government wanted to tax 3% to the Internet for the fiscal year 2010 but a movement in twitter called "#Internet Necesario" (Internet needed) started discussing about it in a polite way to inform the politicians and people why is wrong to tax it. They got media coverage and finally the Mexican Senate asked them to go to discuss the tax. Here is an automated English translation

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