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Transportation

TSA Changes Its Rules, ACLU Lawsuit Dropped 285

Posted by Soulskill from the get-off-my-plane dept.
ndogg writes "Earlier this year, there was much ado about a Ron Paul staffer, Steve Bierfeldt, being detained by the TSA for carrying large sums of money. The ACLU sued on his behalf, and the TSA changed its rules, now stating that its officers can only screen for unsafe materials. With that, the ACLU dropped its suit. '[Ben Wizner, a staff lawyer for the ACLU, said] screeners get a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches, strictly to keep weapons and explosives off planes, not to help police enforce other laws.'"
The Internet

MPAA Shuts Down Town's Municipal WiFi Over 1 Download 323

Posted by timothy from the so-you're-sure-you-want-gov't-run-wifi? dept.
nam37 writes with this BoingBoing snippet "The MPAA has successfully shut down an entire town's municipal WiFi because a single user was found to be downloading a copyrighted movie. Rather than being embarrassed by this gross example of collective punishment (a practice outlawed in the Geneva conventions) against Coshocton, OH, the MPAA's spokeslizard took the opportunity to cry poor (even though the studios are bringing in record box-office and aftermarket receipts)."
Software

Remus Project Brings Transparent High Availability To Xen 137

Posted by timothy from the when-servers-go-south-a-song dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Remus project has just been incorporated into the Xen hypervisor. Developed at the University of British Columbia, Remus provides a thin layer that continuously replicates a running virtual machine onto a second physical host. Remus requires no modifications to the OS or applications within the protected VM: on failure, Remus activates the replica on the second host, and the VM simply picks up where the original system died. Open TCP connections remain intact, and applications continue to run unaware of the failure. It's pretty fun to yank the plug out on your web server and see everything continue to tick along. This sort of HA has traditionally required either really expensive hardware, or very complex and invasive modifications to applications and OSes."
Power

Whistleblower Claims IEA Is Downplaying Peak Oil 720

Posted by kdawson from the routine-denial dept.
Yesterday the Guardian ran a story based on two anonymous sources inside the International Energy Agency who claimed that the agency had distorted key figures on oil reserves. "The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the [IEA] who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying. The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves." Today the IEA released its annual energy outlook and rejected the whistleblowers' charges. The Guardian has an editorial claiming that the economic establishment is too fearful to come clean on the reality of oil suppplies, and makes an analogy with the (marginalized, demonized) economists who warned of a coming economic collapse in 2007.
Government

Submission + - SPAM: Government to order ISPs to store all emails, text

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: The Home Office is pushing through a £2bn surveillance project to track details of everyone's email, mobile phone, text and internet use. The plans would plans require service providers such as ISPs to retain data about instant messages, email and other electronic communications.
Link to Original Source
Censorship

Microsoft Tries To Censor Bing Vulnerability 275

Posted by kdawson from the don't-shout-and-wave-it-about dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Bing search engine has a vulnerability with its cash-back promotion, which impacts both merchants and customers. In traditional Microsoft fashion, the company has responded to the author of the breaking Bing cash-back exploit with a cease & desist letter, rather than by fixing the underlying security problem. It is possible for a malicious user to create fake Bing cash-back requests, resulting in not only fake cash-back costs for the merchant, but also blocking legitimate customers from receiving their cash-back from Bing. The original post is currently available in Bing's cache, although perhaps not for long. But no worries, the author makes it clear that the exploit should be painfully obvious to anyone who reads the Bing cash-back SDK."
The Internet

Murdoch To Explore Blocking Google Searches 549

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the why-is-no-one-calling-for-his-head dept.
In another move sure to continue the certain doom looming over classic publications, Rupert Murdoch has elaborated on the direction he would take in an effort to monetize the content that his websites deliver by attempting to block much of Google's ability to scan and index his news sites. "Murdoch believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results. 'There's a doctrine called "fair use," which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether,' Mr Murdoch told the TV channel. 'But we'll take that slowly.'"
News

LHC Shut Down Again — By Baguette-Dropping Bird 478

Posted by timothy from the first-causes dept.
Philip K Dickhead writes "Is Douglas Adams scripting the saga of sorrows facing the LHC? These time-traveling Higgs-Boson particles certainly exhibit the sign of his absurd sense of humor! Perhaps it is the Universe itself, conspiring against the revelations intimated by the operation of CERN's Large Hadron Collider? This time, it is not falling cranes, cracked magnets, liquid helium leaks or even links to Al Qaeda, that have halted man's efforts to understand the meaning of life, the universe and everything. It now appears that the collider is hindered from an initial firing by a baguette, dropped by a passing bird: 'The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant overheating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.'"
Space

LaserMotive Finds Success In Space Elevator Competition 258

Posted by Soulskill from the i'll-still-take-the-stairs-for-now dept.
Bucc5062 writes "LaserMotive has achieved the first step towards the creation of a working space elevator by qualifying for the $900,000 prize in a contest sponsored by NASA. To achieve this first level, LaserMotive needed to propel a platform up a cable dangling from a helicopter at over 2 m/s. They hit a top speed of 4.13 m/s. The next level of qualification will be to achieve a climb speed greater then 5 m/s. LaserMotive beamed roughly 400 watts of laser power to a moving target at a distance of 1 kilometer, as part of the vertical laser alignment procedure. The target was a retro-reflective board a little larger than 1 meter on a side. The contest will continue for another two days with at least two other teams challenging for the prize. To win the Power Beaming competition, the LaserMotive system uses a high-power laser array to shine ultra-intense infrared light onto high-efficiency solar cells, converting the light into electric power which then drives a motor. 'Our system will track the vehicle as it climbs, compensating for motion due to wind and other changes. Building on our experience from last year’s competition, we are designing an improved system able to capture the full $2,000,000 prize.'"

Comment Re:So Where Exactly is this 'Leaked' Document? (Score 1) 775

by whatajoke (#29978374) Attached to: Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad.

The real question here should be where's the original document and why is the Administration hiding behind 'National security' to avoid releasing it. I've had enough of that over the previous 8 years. Change!

Surely such a question can be asked. But only when democrat dogs stop chasing republican tails, and the republican dogs stop chasing democrat tails. Oh yes, bitter I am.

Comment Re:So Where Exactly is this 'Leaked' Document? (Score 5, Insightful) 775

by whatajoke (#29978348) Attached to: Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad.

So where is this "leaked document" that the summary alludes to?

To quote from Geist's blog:

selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.

I hope that answers your question. Unless you want to out the person leaking this document, he can't ever publish a photocopy of it as it will be traced back to him. And if you think such deception is beyond our autocrats, read up on this and this

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