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Submission + - $75K prosthetic arm is bricked when paired Ipod is stolen. (military.com) 2

Submitted by kdataman
kdataman writes: U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Ben Eberle, who lost an arm and both legs in Afghanistan, had his Ipod Touch stolen on Friday. This particular Ipod Touch has an app on it that controls his $75,000 prosthetic arm. The robbery bricked his prosthesis:

"That is because Eberle's prosthetic hand is programmed to only work with the stolen iPod, and vice versa. Now that the iPod is gone, he said he has to get a new hand and get it reprogrammed with his prosthesis."

I see three possibilities.
1) The article is wrong, possibly to guilt the thief into returning the Ipod.
2) This is an incredibly bad design by Touch Bionics [http://www.touchbionics.com]. Why would you make a $70,000 piece of equipment permanently dependent on a specific Ipod Touch? Ipods do fail or go missing.
3) This is an intentionally bad design to generate revenue. Maybe GM should do this with car keys? "Oops, lost the keys to the corvette. Better buy a new one."

Submission + - The view from inside exploding fireworks

Submitted by kdataman
kdataman writes: There is a breathtaking video on Youtube [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9KZ3jgbbmI] of someone flying a quadcopter around and through a professional fireworks display. Of course, it was an illegal and dangerous thing to do. It also may inspire someone else to do something even more dangerous. But even so, I have watched it 4 times and get goosebumps everytime. An article in Forbes [http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregorymcneal/2014/07/04/video-shows-drone-flying-through-fireworks/] says that unit is a DJI Phantom 2 with a GoPro Hero 3 Silver camera. The fireworks are in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Submission + - Google Glass app lets you "shoot around corners" (rt.com)

Submitted by kdataman
kdataman writes: A few headlines have mentioned a Google Glass app that allows you to "Shoot around corners". No, the bullets are not executing a turn. A clearer description is that you can aim a rifle around a corner before you shoot — or over a wall or even behind your back, without exposing your grey matter. The included marketing video makes it pretty clear. I could see the concept being used for photography, video and other situations where you want to aim something while keeping your head down.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Why don't companies validate emails? (reddit.com)

Submitted by SirDrinksAlot
SirDrinksAlot writes: Why don't all companies validate emails? It seems like a pretty basic piece of security, especially if credit cards are involved. So this is a pretty big pet peeve of mine. I have a fairly plain GMail address which get's a lot of misdirected or typoed email. It's something I generally just deal with or try to deal with it appropriately. I may be wearing out the "Report Spam" button. However recently somebody got a shiny new Kindle for Christmas and they created a new Kindle/Amazon account with my email address. Amazon didn't validate the email address and let this person create an account and start making purchases. I tried to report this to Amazon Support but they were unreceptive that this was some kind of problem. I explained it's my email address and somebody else made an Amazon account using it and there's NO validation. The very next day I receive an email from Amazon saying GMail made the mistake and I should talk to them. I'm not sure how GMail is going to fix Amazon's accounts. After talking to 4 people and a manager my issue is unresolved.
I've explained that I can go into Amazon and hit the password reset button and own this account. Worse of all what if this person has a credit card on the account? There's a lot of damage somebody can do with the account in that case. Yet after a lot of attempts to solve the problem Amazon still insists it's not their problem.
The email from Amazon.ca

Unfortunately, this is an issue that will need to be resolved by Google. We would normally be able to temporarily disable your account in order to sort out the email issues, as these issues can be caused by typos on another person's side. However, as this is not an email typo issue, we will not be able to resolve this issue ourselves. Samantha L

How would my fellow Slashdotters solve this issue? There must be some terms of service preventing me from resetting and closing the account. Since this is my email address does that mean it's my account and COULD just close it?

Submission + - CEO of Green Power, Inc. Under Indictment For Fraud (bnd.com)

Submitted by kdataman
kdataman writes: It has been 3 years since the original Slashdot post, but Green Power, Inc has finally run out of gullible investors. As of yesterday, Michael Spitzauer, the company's CEO, "is being held without bail in federal custody, accused in a federal indictment of scheming to defraud investors." In 2010 GPI claimed that it "had 2 billion in contracts" and was "commencing the building" of solid-waste-to-fuel plants. I was skeptical but interested, so I let Google track the story for 3 years. I saw no evidence that an actual plant was ever built. Neither have I seen any independently verifiable evidence that their process worked as claimed. The real surprise is that it took 3 years to fail.

Submission + - Hackers gain 'full control' of critical SCADA systems (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: Researchers have found holes in industrial control systems that they say grant full control of systems running energy, chemical and transportation systems. They also identified more than 150 zero day vulnerabilities of varying degrees of severity affecting the control systems and some 60,000 industrial control system devices exposed to the public internet.

Submission + - Government Declassifies Worldwide Survey of Biological Warfare (governmentattic.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The GovernmentAttic website has just published a dossier of reports produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency describing Biological Weapons Development in nations throughout the world. The 16 reports were released by the Department of Defense in response to declassification request submitted five years ago. Although the sensitive bits were removed, the remaining portions of the reports demonstrate the prevalence of research, development and deployment of bio weapons worldwide, despite an international treaty prohibiting such activity.

The same website has also published a Thesaurus of Biological Warfare terminology http://www.governmentattic.org/docs/BW-Database-Thesaurus_DNA_1993.pdf
and a listing of pre-1946 reports on biological and chemical warfare from the Army.
http://www.governmentattic.org/5docs/DPG-WDTIC-Reports_1917-1945.pdf

Submission + - TrollingEffects.org to help potential victims of patent trolls (trollingeffects.org)

Submitted by kdataman
kdataman writes: The EFF has helped launch a new site to help the potential victims of patent trolling. It is called TrollingEffects.org and is designed to parallel the way ChillingEffects.org helps those getting DMCA letters. The idea is to educate the targets and help them work together for a more cost-effective defense. You can also read about this on TechDirt:
  [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130731/10290224019/trolling-effects-launched-to-build-database-patent-troll-threats.shtml].

Comment The MEPs simply agree with the lobbyists (Score 1) 108

by kdataman (#42870351) Attached to: EU Data Protection Proposal Taken Word For Word From US Lobbyists

I know there are abuses, but simply agreeing with a lobbyists is nothing wrong. The MEP, it seems to me, has to think about businesses in Europe as well as individuals so there has to be a balance in the regulations. There could and should be lobbyists on both sides of an issue since all a lobbyists does is represent a group and bring their opinion to the decision makers. So here we have a business lobbyist convincing a conservative (pro business) MEP that the lobbyist's position has merit. Not a tough sell. Since US companies have a stake in the decision then their sharing their opinions is natural. If the MEP agrees with the lobbyists position then using their wording is no surprise.

So until someone starts talking about secret payments of some kind, all I see is someone being convinced.

Comment My favorite traffic camera story (Score 1) 330

by kdataman (#42773537) Attached to: San Diego Drops Red-Light Cameras

A driver in DC recently challenged a camera speeding ticket because the camera was set to flag drivers at 45 miles an hour when the construction zone speed limit was actually lower. He beat the ticket even though the camera was set to high, and he never denied that he was speeding. Oh, and did I mention that the guy is a cop who had recently been part of the automated traffic enforcement unit?

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-02/local/36211549_1_45-mph-limit-camera-program-photo-enforcement

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