51974375
submission
realized writes:
A new website PiracyData.org (managed by Mercatus Center at George Washington University) shows real time examples of why most people may be pirating movies... Because they can’t get the movies legally...
The website gathers data on the top pirated movies and checks to see if the movies are available to either stream, rent digitally, or digitally purchase.
On its current top 10 list of most pirated movies – none are available to stream legally, and only three are available to rent digitally.
The only options left are to Purchase digitally (only available for 6 of the movies) or... pirate.
51966769
submission
realized writes:
Last week slashdot covered the Dangerous VBulletin Exploit In the Wild. Apparently hackers have been busy since then because according to security firm Imperva, more than 35,000 sites were recently hacked via this vulnerability. The sad part about this is that it could have all been avoided if the administrator of the websites just removed the “/install” and/or “/core/install” folders – something that you would think the installer should do on its own.
51953297
submission
realized writes:
The ObamaCare website, Healthcare.gov has a hidden terms of service that is not shown to people when the sign up. The hidden terms, only viewable if you “view source” on the site says that the user has “no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system”. Sadly, the $634 million dollar website still does not work for most people so its hard to confirm – though when its fixed in 2 months, we should finally be able to see it.
49374175
submission
realized writes:
Involved in a ring that is responsible of trafficking more than 95,000 stolen credit cards and stealing more then $5 Million dollars, the last three people involved in "Western Express" were finally sentenced today.
EGOR SHEVELEV, a/k/a “Eskalibur” a/k/a "Esk,” 27 sentenced to 13 1/3-to-40 years in state prison
DOUGLAS LATTA, a/k/a “Realbusy,” 40 sentenced to 22-to-44 years in state prison
NNA CIANO, a/k/a “Angela Perez,” 41 sentenced to 19 2/3-to-47 years in state prison
You can read the opinion of the court of an earlier trial regarding the corporation behind the whole thing, "Western Express International" and its owner, VADIM VASSILENKO.
38353959
submission
realized writes:
Apple is currently being sued over four patents when it comes to passbook. The first two are in regards to "Information management and synchronous communications system with menu generation", and the second two titled "Information management and synchronous communications system with menu generation, and handwriting and voice modification of orders"
The company doing the suing is called Ameranth, a company that both Microsoft and Motorola have given strategic investments to.
35076943
submission
realized writes:
it seems more and more common that my friends are getting into these water ionizer which apparently can change the pH of a water from about 7 up to a 9.5 (more alkaline). There seems to be no real documentation and the only “news” I can find on the subject are press releases.
The companies selling these things operate on a pyramid. They have discussions and invite people in to “sell” the product. In these discussions you hear about friends of friends who were dying of stage 4 lung cancer and stopped all treatment but then started drinking this water and all of a sudden they are cured.
Has there been any actual scientific studies done on the benefits of drinking alkaline water (please don’t compare alkaline water to alkaline foods)? Is it just snake oil? Why are so many people spending anywhere from $3000-$6000 on these machines? Does it do anything to benefit the body?
29693385
submission
realized writes:
While everybody else is complaining about AT&T’s throttling, Matt Spaccarelli decided to sue, and won. The small claims court judge said “it wasn't fair for the company to purposely slow down his iPhone, when it had sold him an "unlimited data" plan.” And awarded Matt with $850 for his trouble. This could be good news for throttlers, who have reported being throttled after only 1.5gb or after watching a tv show on Netflix but still being well under 2gb of data usage.
28364844
submission
realized writes:
According to gawker.com, the group known as anonymous has been tricking its twitter followers to help in the takedown of justice and fbi websites yesterday.. Apparently, once links the group posted to their twitter, facebook and irc channels were clicked, the unsuspecting user’s computer would then load a website version of the groups Low Orbit Ion Cannon. (LOIC).When Activated, it continues to reload the victim’s website over and over again. According to reports the link, was shared 4 times a minute
27816816
submission
realized writes:
Over the past few months a bunch of my friends with an iPhone 4 and now 4s seemed to be misinformed that they in fact had a 4G phone. After explaining it to them I started to think – man, apple’s marketing team needs a promotion (or to be fired for misleading). A couple of weeks ago I noticed however that AT&T on their own website is advertising the IPhone 4S as a 4G phone – and as of today its still the same. Not only is the iPhone 4S advertised as a 4G phone (with the 4G logo on the picture in search results) but if you search for all AT&T 4G phones on their website, it’s the first one that comes up!
27046652
submission
realized writes:
Yesterday Carrier IQ released a report which tries to answer some questions about how the system operates. Also after reports of the FBI using Carrier IQ data – the company sidestepped the question their response by saying "Carrier IQ has never provided any data to the FBI. If approached by a law enforcement agency, we would refer them to the network operators" Additionally the EFF just released a report which says they believe keystroke data "oeis in fact being inadvertently transmitted to some third parties" but they would like to study carrier profiles to verify information.
27019010
submission
realized writes:
Carrier IQ has finally answered some of the questions everybody has been asking in 19 page report released earlier today. The report, while doesn’t answer all questions does cover some and specifically addresses some issues came up on the now famous youtube video released by android developer Trevor Eckhar. Carrier IQ specifically addresses some of the main issues that arose from his video, claiming in this document that they do not read or even have the ability to read text message data among other things.
27005048
submission
realized writes:
As you already know there is a lot of information about Carrier IQ – a company that earlier admitted to Wired.com that they can in fact log text message data – then denied it later (along with everything else). Since then lawsuits have been filed, google and OEM’s are distancing themselves from the rootkit maker, and now – the FBI says they cannot talk about it because it "could reasonably be expected to interfere with law enforcement proceedings."
26417342
submission
realized writes:
We have all heard of soft caps put on by cell phone carriers. AT&T, Verizon and others alike have all said that they will (and have already started to), “throttle” users in the top 5% of data usage. With LTE starting to be deployed to multiple markets now this seems to be more of a problem. AT&T and Verizon are selling LTE phones and once users realize they can watch movies, download games, etc without lag on the new technology, are overnight getting capped. At LTE Speeds of 30-50MB/sec it’s very easy to hit the “soft cap” in place. The cap, according to some XDA members, seems to be anywhere from 4gb to 8gb/month. What is the point of offering LTE if you aren’t able to handle the small percentage of users that have LTE devices in those areas? Is this a bandwidth problem or a licensing problem with the wireless spectrum? Is 4, 6, or even 10 gb/month really abuse?
26183098
submission
realized writes:
As earlier reported on Slashdot, CarrierIQ installs software on cellphones to track user activity. The company earlier denied that they had a “root kit” installed but won’t go into details as to what they track. CarrierIQ is now suing the man responsible for shedding light on CarrierIQ for “copyright infringement” for copying the company’s training manuals and posting it on his own website. Luckily, EFF has decided to help out the XDA Developer, TrevE. You can see the letter here (https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/eckhart_cease_desist_demand_redacted.pdf)
