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Submission + - $85000 Cellphone Charge (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Piotr Staniaszek had been using his cell phone as a modem for his computer, thinking he was covered under his $10-a-month unlimited mobile browser plan from Canadian telco Bell Mobility. He actually caught the bill at $65,000." Staniaszek thought he was being clever using the phone as a modem to connect to the Internet. He must have downloaded a lot quasi-legal [adult] media files to accrue that much charges. Unfortunately, carriers have very special definitions of what kind of data their unlimited data plans cover.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - EverQuest 2: Devs Grant Favors to Cheating Guild 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: SOE's small and generally quiet EQ2 Test Server is suddenly at the center of a major controversy. A guild proven to have enjoyed Dev favors on Test was transferred for free to a Live (production) server. No other Test players were allowed this "small kindness," widely known to be forbidden, and transfers from one Live PvE server to another usually cost a player $50 USD.

In an epic thread on SOE's official EQ2 forums, the new senior producer for the game (Bruce "Froech" Ferguson, taking over for the recently departed Scott Hartsman) insults and blames the other players for the fiasco, choosing a guilt trip instead of an apology. Red-names at SOE claim to be sorry that the player-base is offended but, in excellent political double-speak, never once acknowledge themselves as the source of the offense.
Businesses

Submission + - Should IT Support the iPhone for Business?

Submitted by
explosivejared
explosivejared writes: "Should IT departments support the iPhone for business use? A new report by Forrester Research suggests not. The report cites security issues and pricing as cons that outweigh the pros of usability and popularity. From the article: "Enterprises often make mobile device purchasing decisions based on the experience of their peers or industry analysts' recommendations, but with such information lacking about the iPhone, Forrester said it won't likely be making its way into many businesses anytime soon.""
The Internet

Submission + - Canada's New Copyright Debate

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Leave it to Michael Geist, who led the fight against the Canadian DMCA, to put this week's event into perspective. He highlights how the online pressure against the government shows the power of social media and how the debate in Canada over copyright must now address user rights and consumer property concerns.
Networking

Submission + - Data trips between light and sound

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "As you probably are aware, future communications networks will certainly be based on optics. A research team led by Duke University physicists has done an important discovery which might lead to these future super-fast optical communications networks. The team has found a way to store information coming from a beam of light by converting it to sound waves. More importantly, it was able to retrieve it again as light waves. These reversible data transfers from light to sound are today limited to labs. Several years will pass before commercial companies can use this technique because there are still some technical issues to solve. But read more for additional references and a diagram showing how data can flow between light and sound and light again.."
Government

Submission + - Boys to Girls ratio exceeds 120:100 in China (sina.com)

Submitted by
hackingbear
hackingbear writes: "Surveys in China show that boys-to-girls ratio exceeds the alarming 120:100 in the country.

The number of males in China at marriage age is 18 million more than that of females due to a long period of high sex birth ratio since the 1980s, according to the country's family planning authorities.

The sex ratio at birth in rural areas is 122.85:100, higher than the national average of 119.58:100, as compared with the normal sex ratio of 103 to 107:100, according to Zhang Weiqing, National Population and Family Planning Commission director.
This is, of course, the result of the One-Child Policy mixing with the must-male-offspring-or-damned-by-ancestors heritage (which is the main cause of the Policy was needed.)

China will continue to crack down on illegal prenatal sex selection and will try to help people discard traditional ideas of a preference for boys...
And of course, as usual, whatever the laws say people will find a way to get around. They will continue to abort girl fetuses until they get a boy."
The Military

Submission + - British nukes protected solely by bicycle locks

Submitted by StationM
StationM writes: Newsnight at BBC2 has revealed that British were secured only by a bicycle lock and 'trust' in the integrity of the officers in charge of the weapons. "Newsnight has discovered that until the early days of the Blair government the RAF's nuclear bombs were armed by turning a bicycle lock key...The Royal Navy argued that officers of the Royal Navy as the Senior Service could be trusted:

"It would be invidious to suggest... that Senior Service officers may, in difficult circumstances, act in defiance of their clear orders".

Neither the Navy nor the RAF installed PAL (Permissive Active Link) protection on their nuclear weapons.

The RAF kept their unsafeguarded bombs at airbases until they were withdrawn in 1998."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7097101.stm

sure makes me feel safe!
Privacy

Submission + - Do you have any idea who last looked at your data?

Submitted by
tqft
tqft writes: "Or why the NSA is overspending.

"What these situations have in common is that a corporation was a ready source of data. And as search engines and social networks collect more and more user data for business purposes, governments will find that data more and more useful for their investigatory purposes.

Further, as a person's stored data profile grows to include items such as group memberships, purchases and a list of friends, it forms a very tempting target for governments to try to mine for suspected criminal contacts. This concept is of course not new, with traffic analysis (of phone calls or data) being an ancient intelligence technique. But corporations are now essentially volunteering to collect all the information, put it in a readily searchable package and then perform all the analytical work. "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/15/comment

Yes yahoo and friends are doing it for advertising and the governments are subverting it. But honestly, wouldn't at least some of the NSA dollars on collecting everything and doing it themselves be better spent getting people to sign up to social networking sites and let the users incriminate themselves?

"Search engine companies are understandably reluctant to confront these issues. They make predictable statements about needing to obey local laws and the benefits of their products"

"We cannot expect that having large warehouses of data on individuals will be free from unintended consequences, especially when there are incentives to try to build highly detailed models of everyone's lives. The price of total personalisation is total surveillance."

Article authors blog here:
http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001280.html"
The Internet

Submission + - Comcast Sued Over BitTorrent Blocking

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: From the other-shoe-dropping dept?
WIRED's Threat Level blog reports that cable ISP Comcast is being sued by a California man over it's interference with the BitTorrent use of its customers, "arguing that the company's secret use of technology to limit peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent violates federal computer fraud laws, their user contracts and anti-fraudulent advertising statutes."

Comcast maintains that "Comcast does not, has not, and will not block any websites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services." And says, "...we use the latest technologies to manage our network so that they can continue to enjoy these applications."

The plaintiff wants the court to force Comcast to stop interfering with the traffic, and also wants the court to certify the suit as a class action.

Related stories on Slashdot:
FCC Complaint Filed Over Comcast P2P Blocking
Comcast Confirmed as Discriminating Against FileSharing Traffic
Security

Submission + - NAC's dirty little secrets told by early adopters (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Early network access control adopters are attracted to the technology for very specific reasons that often don't include the main reason NAC technology was brought about in the first place: endpoint checking. For example, the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development, which has used Mirage Networks NAC gear since 2005, has about 250 desktops attached to two Extreme Black Diamond 1Gbps switches that are connected by a 10Gbps fiber link. The department uses the Mirage device for two reasons, Kupchaunis says. The first is to keep unauthorized users who are allowed into the building from gaining network access, a form of identity-based access control. The second is to make sure devices that are allowed access don't misbehave once they are on the network. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/111407-nac-early-adopters.html"
The Internet

Submission + - Average number of links on a web page (uclue.com)

Submitted by flatbush52
flatbush52 writes: According to Uclue, the average website includes 62.5 links. Actually, the figure is really according to IBM, Microsoft, and HP researchers who studies a few hundred million pages. But Uclue is the one who puts it into perspective in a nicely done write-up. The figure includes all links on a page, including anchor tags, image links, advertising, etc. Because of the heavily skewed nature of the web, with a small number of sites housing thousands upon thousands of links, there's a sizable discrepancy between the mean and median figures, which is also discussed in the Uclue article. By the way, Uclue is the same group who gave us the controversial estimate on the Enegy Use of the Internet a few weeks ago...they're getting to be an interesting little operation.
Biotech

Journal Journal: Scientists discover protein cue that allows limb regrowth in newts

Journal by stemceller
Agence France Presse (AFP) reports "Scientists have discovered a protein's molecular signal that apparently plays a key role in allowing newts -- which are amphibians -- to regrow severed limbs, a report in the journal Science said Friday. The protein called nAG, produced by nerve and skin cells, apparently plays a key role in stimulating blastema cells, the undifferentiated cells from which a new organ or limb can grow, Kumar and
Biotech

Submission + - Nanotube Vests Could Deflect Bullets (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by
Invisible Pink Unicorn
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes: "Conventional kevlar vests and body armor stop bullets by spreading out the bullet's force over a larger area. While this does stop the bullet from penetrating the skin, blunt force trauma can still lead to incapacitation and damage to critical organs. Researchers at the Centre for Advanced Materials Technology, University of Sydney, say that the elasticity of carbon nanotubes may put an end to this by using the energy of the initial impact to rebound the bullets, essentially canceling out the force normally felt by the wearer. From the Telegraph: 'The team tested carbon nanotubes ... by bombarding them with diamond bullets travelling at speeds varying between 1000 and 3500 metres per second, revealing the conditions when the bullet could bounce back. Based on their findings, they calculate that six layers of woven nanotube yarn — about 600 millionths of a metre thick — may protect the wearer from a revolver bullet, so that it bounces off.'"
Enlightenment

Submission + - Heaviest black hole ever found (msn.com)

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "Astronomers say they've discovered a black hole whose mass of 24 to 33 times that of our sun defies current theories to explain its formation. The hole is located in the nearby dwarf galaxy IC 10, 1.8 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. The dead star from which the hole could have derived is estimated to have had a mass of about 60 or more solar masses."

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