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The Courts

Fourth Amendment Protects Hosted E-mail 236

Posted by kdawson from the decade-overdue dept.
Okian Warrior writes "As reported on the EFF website, today the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that the contents of the messages in an email inbox hosted on a provider's servers are protected by the Fourth Amendment, even though the messages are accessible to an email provider. As the court puts it, 'The government may not compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of a subscriber's emails without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause.'"
Image

Archaeologists Find 2,400-Year-Old Soup Screenshot-sm 108

Posted by samzenpus from the your-dinner-is-cold dept.
Chinese archaeologists have discovered a sealed bronze pot containing what they believe is a batch of 2,400-year-old bone soup. The pot was dug up near the ancient capital of Xian. Liu Daiyun of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archeology says, "It's the first discovery of bone soup in Chinese archaeological history. The discovery will play an important role in studying the eating habits and culture of the Warring States Period (475-221BC)." No word on if the archaeologists also found the accompanying ancient crackers.

Comment and what would be the point of class action? (Score 1) 434

by Lead Butthead (#34546300) Attached to: Comcast Accused of Congestion By Choice

Seems to me that if this is all true, there is certainly grounds for a class action suite here.

And what would be the point of class action? Comcast will eventually settle for "undisclosed sum" with out "admitting wrong doing," Lawyers walk away with millions while the rest of Comcast customers gets a 5 dollar coupon off the next month.
Bug

When Computers Go Wrong 250

Posted by samzenpus from the best-of-intentions dept.
Barence writes "PC Pro's Stewart Mitchell has charted the world's ten most calamitous computer cock-ups. They include the Russians' stealing software that resulted in their gas pipeline exploding, the Mars Orbiter that went missing because the programmers got their imperial and metric measurements mixed up, the Soviet early-warning system that confused the sun for a missile and almost triggered World War III, plus the Windows anti-piracy measure that resulted in millions of legitimate customers being branded software thieves."
Censorship

WikiLeaks, Money, and Ron Paul 565

Posted by Soulskill from the headlines-that-will-make-some-people-mad dept.
Another day, another dozen WikiLeaks stories, several of which revolve around money. PayPal has given in to pressure to release WikiLeaks funds, though they still won't do further transactions. Mobile payment firm Xipwire is attempting to take PayPal's place. "We do think people should be able to make their own decisions as to who they donate to." PCWorld wonders if the WikiLeaks' money woes could lead to great adoption of Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer currency system we've discussed in the past. Meanwhile, Representative Ron Paul spoke in defense of WikiLeaks on the House floor Thursday, asking a number of questions, including, "Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on WikiLeaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?" The current uproar over WikiLeaks has prompted Paul Vixie to call for an end to the DDoS attacks and Vladimir Putin to break out a metaphor involving cows and hockey pucks.
Hardware Hacking

All-Analog DIY Segway Project Screenshot-sm 141

Posted by Soulskill from the take-out-some-cliff-insurance-buddy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "One of the zany hacker-makers here at MIT just finished this DIY Segway project (video). Difference from the others: it's all analog. The controller is built without a microprocessor or even digital logic. It does use a gyroscope like the real Segway. The functionality looks fairly basic, but the fact that the controller works at all is amazing. The guy has a ton of other projects on his site too. Definitely worth a read for people who enjoy building things."
Security

Stuxnet Still Out of Control At Iran Nuclear Sites 361

Posted by timothy from the wee-bit-of-a-disaster dept.
Velcroman1 writes "Iran's nuclear program is still in chaos despite its leaders' adamant claim that they have contained the computer worm that attacked their facilities, cybersecurity experts in the US and Europe say. Last week President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after months of denials, admitted that the worm had penetrated Iran's nuclear sites, but he said it was detected and controlled. The second part of that claim, experts say, doesn't ring true. Owners of several security sites have discovered huge bumps in traffic from Iran, as the country tries to deal with Stuxnet. 'Our traffic from Iran has really spiked,' said a corporate officer who asked that neither he nor his company be named. 'Iran now represents 14.9 percent of total traffic, surpassing the United States with a total of 12.1 percent.'"

Comment So is there an enforcement clause in this? (Score 1) 450

by Lead Butthead (#34500286) Attached to: Facebook's Zuckerberg To Give Away Half His Cash

If this douche decides not to, who's there to enforce this pledge? "I was under the influence of several different controlled subs... medications when I signed the papers. I have no idea what I signed. I have changed my mind since, and if you have a problem with that, talk to my lawyers."
Government

Pentagon Papers Ellsberg Supports Wikileaks 464

Posted by samzenpus from the your-daily-wikileaks-story dept.
wierd_w writes "Daniel Ellsberg says: 'Every attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.' Due to the recent debates over the pros and cons between the wikileaks releases and those of the historic 'Pentagon papers,' Daniel Ellsberg, who released the pentagon papers in 1971, has written an editorial on the subject declaring that he rejects the mantra of 'Pentagon Papers good; WikiLeaks material bad,' and that further 'That's just a cover for people who don't want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that every attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.'"
Classic Games (Games)

Pac-Man's Ghost Behavior Algorithms 194

Posted by Soulskill from the i-hate-the-pink-one dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This article has a very interesting description of the algorithms behind the ghosts in Pac-Man. I had no idea about most of this information, but that's probably because it's difficult to study the ghosts when I die every 30 seconds. Quoting: 'The ghosts are always in one of three possible modes: Chase, Scatter, or Frightened. The "normal" mode with the ghosts pursuing Pac-Man is Chase, and this is the one that they spend most of their time in. While in Chase mode, all of the ghosts use Pac-Man's position as a factor in selecting their target tile, though it is more significant to some ghosts than others. In Scatter mode, each ghost has a fixed target tile, each of which is located just outside a different corner of the maze. This causes the four ghosts to disperse to the corners whenever they are in this mode. Frightened mode is unique because the ghosts do not have a specific target tile while in this mode. Instead, they pseudorandomly decide which turns to make at every intersection.'"
Security

Canon's Image Verification System Cracked 118

Posted by Soulskill from the picture-is-worth-a-thousand-lies dept.
TJNoffy writes "The H Security's H-online reports that 'Hacker Dmitry Sklyarov has succeeded in extracting the secret signing key from numerous digital SLR cameras and has used it to sign modified images which Canon's latest OSK-E3 security kit verifies as legitimate. Canon's Original Data Security System is intended to show whether changes have been made to photographs and to verify date and location information. The system is primarily used for ensuring the integrity of evidence, for reporting accidents and for construction records.'"
The Internet

Web Bugs the New Norm For Businesses? 108

Posted by Soulskill from the stop-or-i'll-say-stop-again dept.
An anonymous reader writes "What ever happened to the good old days, when underhanded email practices were only used by shady email marketing companies and spammers? Today, it seems, the mainstream corporate world has begun to employ the same tactics as spammers to track their customers' email. Jonathan Zdziarski noted in a blog entry that AT&T is using web bugs to track email sent to customers. Could this be used for nefarious purposes?"

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