Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Crime

Justice Not As Blind As Previously Thought 256

Posted by samzenpus from the too-pretty-for-jail dept.
NotSoHeavyD3 writes "I doubt this is much of a surprise but apparently Cornell University did a study that seems to show you're more likely to get convicted if you're ugly. From the article: 'According to a Cornell University study, unattractive defendants are 22 percent more likely to be convicted than good-looking ones. And the unattractive also get slapped with harsher sentences — an average of 22 months longer in prison.'"
The Courts

Writer Peter Watts Sentenced; No Jail Time 299

Posted by timothy from the new-spirit-of-openness dept.
shadowbearer writes "SF writer Peter Watts, a Canadian citizen, whose story we have read about before in these pages, was sentenced three days ago in a Port Huron, MI court. There's not a lot of detail in the story, and although he is still being treated like a terrorist (cannot enter or pass through the US, DNA samples) he was not ordered to do any time in jail, was freed, and has returned home to his family. The judge in the case was, I believe, as sympathetic as the legal system would allow him to be."
Science

Submission + - Man w/ Rare Blood Antibody Saves Over 2Mil Babies (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by gamebittk
gamebittk writes: James Harrison, 74, has an antibody in his plasma that stops babies dying from Rhesus disease, a form of severe anaemia. He has donated 984 times since he was 18 years old, saving an estimated 2.2 million babies so far. He made a pledge to be a donor aged 14 after undergoing major chest surgery in which he needed 13 litres of blood.
Piracy

Sony Joins the Offensive Against Pre-Owned Games 461

Posted by Soulskill from the saddle-up dept.
BanjoTed writes "In a move to counter sales of pre-owned games, EA recently revealed DLC perks for those who buy new copies of Mass Effect 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Now, PlayStation platform holder Sony has jumped on the bandwagon with similar plans for the PSP's SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3. '[Players] will need to register their game online before they are able to access the multiplayer component of the title. UMD copies will use a redeemable code while the digital version will authenticate automatically in the background. Furthermore ... anyone buying a pre-owned copy of the game will be forced to cough up $20 to obtain a code to play online."
Privacy

Submission + - Oklahoma Leaks Tens of Thousands of Social Securit

Submitted by rockclimber
rockclimber writes: The developers at Oklahoma's Department of Corrections slept through [...] computer science class, and even managed to skip all of Common Sense 101. You see, not only did they trust anonymous user input on their public-facing website, but they blindly executed it and displayed whatever came back.

The result of this negligently bad coding has some rather serious consequences: the names, addresses, and social security numbers of tens of thousands of Oklahoma residents were made available to the general public for a period of at least three years. Up until yesterday, April 13 2008, anyone with a web browser and the knowledge from Chapter One of SQL For Dummies could have easily accessed — and possibly, changed — any data within the DOC's databases. It took Alex Papadimoulis all of a minute to figure out how to download 10,597 records — SSNs and all — from their website.
Google

Submission + - Google's $4.6bn wireless plan grounded

Submitted by Almir
Almir writes: Google's plans to bid for a portion of America's airwaves were dealt a blow last night when the Federal Communications Commission refused to approve two of the internet company's conditions. Google had said that it would match the $4.6 billion (£2.3 billion) reserve price set for a 700MHz licence, which could be used to provide wireless broadband internet access across the US from 2009, if the eventual winner was forced to meet four "open access" conditions. However, two more controversial provisions put forward by Google, which would require the eventual licensee to sell access to its network on a wholesale basis to rivals and allow other parties physical access to infrastructure at realistic points, were not included.
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - Hackers greet Apple's iPhone

Submitted by Kenton Monterio
Kenton Monterio writes: A group of independent programmers created a simple little 'Hello world' program that appears to be the first downloadable program created for the iPhone, bypassing Apple's "approved" method of developing software for the device which is applications hosted on Web sites and accessed through the iPhone's Web browser rather than its internal memory

Slashdot Top Deals

Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file.

Close