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Submission + - Groklaw Closure (groklaw.net)

Submitted by JImbob0i0
JImbob0i0 writes: After many years amid fears of forced exposure in light of the recent NSA/PRISM/Lavabits events PJ has closed the doors of Groklaw.

With Microsoft/Motorola, Oracle/Google, SCO/IBM, Apple/Samsung still going on in the background will the legal implications of technology companies fade from view without the light that has been shined on them over the years?

SCO was ridiculed in no small part to researchers at the site.

Oracle was shown to have severe misunderstandings of the Java licenses.

Microsoft was forced out of the background.

When PJ last retired she passed the site over to another but recently she's been managing it herself again. This closure notice appears pretty final however.

What now for legal blogs in the technological world?

Submission + - Voyager 1 Has Left the Solar System (umd.edu)

Submitted by Trax3001BBS
Trax3001BBS writes: Last year on July 27, 2012.

  The delayed announcement? Voyager 1 observed no change in the direction of the magnetic field, as had been expected.
"According to conventional wisdom, we'll know we've passed through this mysterious boundary when we stop seeing solar particles and start seeing galactic particles, and we also detect a change in the prevailing direction of the local magnetic field. "

Submission + - NSA Broke Privacy Rules Thousands of Times per Year, Audit Finds (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by vikingpower
vikingpower writes: Here is a full executive summary of a classified internal NSA report on breaches of NSA privacy rules and legal restrictions.The report covers the period from January through March 2012 and includes comparative data for the full preceding year. Its author is director of oversight and compliance for the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, but the scope of the report is narrower. Incidents are counted only if they took place within “NSA-Washington,” a term encompassing the Ft. Meade headquarters and nearby facilities. The NSA declined to provide comparable figures for its operations as a whole. A senior intelligence official said only that if all offices and directorates were included, the number of violations would “not double.” A main article in today's Washington Post covers the scoop. US District Judge Reggie B. Walton, leader of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and interviewed in a related article, says " ( ... ) the court lacks the tools to independently verify how often the government’s surveillance breaks the court’s rules that aim to protect Americans’ privacy. Without taking drastic steps, it also cannot check the veracity of the government’s assertions that the violations its staff members report are unintentional mistakes ( ... ) "

Submission + - The Security Industry Isn't Helping Beleagured Tibetans (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Tibetan activists are under cyber attack, and they say the security industry is not helping. The attacks are on a massive scale using fresh flaws, while the industry sells solutions suitable for attacks which use known exploits. Worse, at least one security firm effectively used the Tibetans' plight to its own advantage — its fake honeypot "Tibetan protest" site, built for the sole purpose of gathering information, actually fooled some genuine activists

Submission + - NASA abandons Kepler repairs, looks to the future (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: If NASA has anything to say about it, Kepler is down, but not out. At a press teleconference on Thursday it announced that it has abandoned efforts to repair the damaged unmanned probe, which was designed to search for extrasolar planets and is no longer steady enough to continue its hunt. But the space agency is looking into alternative missions for the spacecraft based on its remaining capabilities.

Submission + - NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds

Submitted by rts008
rts008 writes: From TFA: The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

It was interesting to me to look at the bar graph that showed that while FISA violations seemed relatively stable, Presidential executive order violations have steadily increased. Hmmm... Then we have this gem:

The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Hopefully (yes, I can be a dreamer), all of this fallout from the Snowden incident, following the Manning circus, will finally call attention to the ridiculous behavior of our gov't. since 9-11. I, for one, am tired of this striving for a police state mentality.

Submission + - Mars One Applicant Wants To Have A Baby In Space (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Rebecka
Rebecka writes: Duckworth is just one of the 100,000 applicants to apply for Mars One, an Netherlands-based organization that is aiming to establish permanent life on Mars by the year 2023. The 28-year-old electrical engineer recently revealed during an interview with the Huffington Post that having children on the red planet, if she secures the chance to win an outer space lifestyle, isn't out of the question.

According to CNN, those chosen for the experiment, which will eventually be whittled down to several groups of four “normal, well-adjusted people,” will not be permitted to return to life on Earth. Duckworth, one of several applicants interviewed, said she is still interested in participating calling the organization’s goal a “stepping stone in human galactic expansion.”

Submission + - IAB urges people to stop "Mozilla from hijacking the Internet" (paritynews.com) 2

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: In its latest attempt to stop Mozilla from going ahead with its proposed default blocking of third-party cookies in Firefox, the IAB took out a full page ad urging users to stop “Mozilla from hijacking the Internet”. Through the advert IAB has claimed that the Firefox maker wants to be the “judge and jury” when it comes to business models on the web. According to the IAB, Mozilla wants to eliminate the cookies which enable online advertisers to reach the right audience. IAB notes that “If cookies are eliminated, it is clear to us that consumers will get a less relevant and diverse Internet experience.”

Submission + - Near death experience caused by electrical activity in dying brain (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Dupple
Dupple writes: A surge of electrical activity in the brain could be responsible for the vivid experiences described by near-death survivors, scientists report.

A study carried out on dying rats found high levels of brainwaves at the point of the animals' demise.

US researchers said that in humans this could give rise to a heightened state of consciousness.

The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The lead author of the study, Dr Jimo Borjigin, of the University of Michigan, said: "A lot of people thought that the brain after clinical death was inactive or hypoactive, with less activity than the waking state, and we show that is definitely not the case.

"If anything, it is much more active during the dying process than even the waking state."

Submission + - Water Bottles Create Cheap Lighting In Philippines (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: A simple initiative in the Philippines is bringing a bit of brightness into the lives of the country's poorest people. The project is called "Litre of Light", and the technology involved is just a plastic bottle filled with water, and installed in the roof of a slum dwelling. With 50 to 60 Watts of light output during daylight hours, the bottle-light is an environmentally-friendly alternative to an electric light bulb, and it's virtually free.

Submission + - Photocopying Michelle Obama's Diary, Just in Case

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Conor Friedersdorf has a good (and humorous) read in the Atlantic about the analogy that President Obama has settled on to explain his theory of the NSA surveillance controversy to reporters. "The question is how do we make the American people more comfortable?" Obama said. "If I tell Michelle that I did the dishes ... and she's a little skeptical, well, I'd like her to trust me, but maybe I need to bring her back and show her the dishes and not just have her take my word for it." The analogy has been widely panned, and for good reason. Friedersdorf writes that he has come up with a much better analogy. What if "Barack snuck into Michelle's closet one day, dug through her belongings until he found her diary, and photocopied it. Then he replaced the original, locked the copy in his desk, and didn't think about it much until she found out months later and furiously confronted him." Admittedly, it isn't a perfect analogy either says Friedersdorf, "but it comes a lot closer than Obama did to capturing the actual stakes in this debate, and the reason so many Americans are angry at him."

Comment Re:They are in such demand (Score 5, Insightful) 330

by Dupple (#44279385) Attached to: Microsoft Slashes Prices On Surface

While it's quite possible to 'create' and do 'useful work' on a tablet it certainly seems more geared towards consumption. What Microsoft hasn't understood is that people use their software because they have to at work.

Office is not compelling. IE is not compelling. This is Microsofts attempt to move their monopoly to a new computing sector. It won't work. People don't want to use their software.

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