Anonymous Howard writes "If you visit a lot of bars and restaurants, you've likely crossed paths with driver's license scanners — machines that supposedly verify that your license is valid. In actuality, many of these scanners are designed to record your license information in addition to verifying them, and those that authenticate against a remote database are creating a record of when and where you buy alcohol. Not only that, but they're not even particularly effective — the bar code on your license uses an open, documented standard and can be rewritten to change your age or picture. Collecting our driver's license information is one thing, but collecting data about our personal drinking habits is not only a violation of, according to the ACLU representative quoted in the article, privacy and civil liberties, but this 'drinking record' could also create problems for people in civil and criminal lawsuits as proof of alcohol purchases in DUI cases or evidence of alcoholism in divorce lawsuits."

grassy_knoll writes "Apparently, the FBI hasn't been paying the telcos for the wiretaps they've initiated, so the telcos have canceled the wiretaps. From the AP article linked: 'Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time. A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said. In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found.'"

Over the weekend we posted a story about a new copyright bill that creates a new govt. agency in charge of copyright enforcement. Kevin Way writes "In particular, the bill grants this new agency the right to seize any computer or network hardware used to "facilitate" a copyright crime and auction it off. You would not need to be found guilty at trial to face this penalty. You may want to read a justification of it, and criticism presented by Declan McCullagh and Public Knowledge." Lots of good followup there on a really crazy development.

Preedit writes "Microsoft has set up a website that uses inkblot images to help users create passwords. The site asks users view a series of inkblots and write down the first and last letters of whatever word they associate with each inkblot. Then they combine the letters to form a password. Microsoft claims it's a way to create passwords that are easy to remember but hard to crack. But a word of warning, the story notes that Microsoft is collecting and storing users' word associations."

Ponca City, We Love You writes "For years, the major record labels have fought a pitched battle against the MP3 format. Although major labels like EMI and the Universal Music Group have embraced MP3s in recent months, a story from the Mercury News says early returns from those moves indicate they've had little impact on the industry's fortunes — for better or for worse. 'These are ailing businesses on their last legs,' said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, a market research company focused on digital media. The question of copy protection on song downloads 'matters a whole lot less to them than it once did.' The industry has a bigger problem. Consumers used to buy CDs for $10 or $15 a pop. Increasingly, they're buying songs at about $1 apiece instead. So, even if transactions continue to increase, the industry is seeing far less money each time consumers buy and it's having a difficult time making up the difference."

Nanotech Coward writes "The unknown human health and environmental impacts of nanotechnology are a bigger worry for scientists than for the public, according to a new report in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The new report was based on a national telephone survey of American households and a sampling of 363 leading U.S. nanotechnology scientists and engineers. It reveals that those with the most insight into a technology with enormous potential — and that is already emerging in hundreds of products — are unsure what health and environmental problems might be posed by the technology."

caluml writes "There is a humourous look at "What would happen if Microsoft had designed GMail". Gems include: "Another security measurement we'll add is that you won't be able to log-in with just username anymore but are required to enter the full username@gmail.com. Furthermore, we will change the browser URL from 'http://gmail.microsoft.com/' to the more professional looking 'http://by114w.bay114.gmail.live.com/mail/mail.aspx?rru=home'.""

prostoalex writes "Several companies have announced solid state hard drives in excess of one terrabyte in size. ComputerWorld describes one from BitMicro that's just 3.5". Their flash drive will support up to 4 Gbps data transfer rate. From the article: 'SSDs access data in microseconds, instead of the millliseconds that traditional hard drives use to retrieve data. The BitMicro E-Disk Altima 4Gb FC delivers more than 55,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) and has a sustained data transfer rate over 230MB/sec. By comparison, a fast hard drive for example will run at around 300 IOPS.'" Ah, the speed of tech. Seems like only last month we were talking about 500GB drives.

sea_stuart writes "Like your ADSL connection to go 100 times faster? Despite the grim state of Australian mathematics and science, there is still exciting original work being done Down Under. John Papandriopoulos, a Research Fellow with the ARC Special Research Centre for Ultra-Broadband Information Networks (CUBIN) has developed a method to reduce crosstalk interference in ADSL technologies to bring speeds up the theoretical maxima possible. With an Australian Federal election due in a few weeks, and both parties promising improved broadband speeds and access, this is a welcome development, hopefully enabling higher speeds without huge expenses."

AlexGr writes "Jeff Gould raises an interesting question in Interop News: Why does Red Hat tolerate CentOS? The Community ENTerprise Operating System is an identical binary clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (minus the trademarks), compiled from the source code RPMs that Red Hat conveniently provides on its FTP site. It is also completely free, as in beer. CentOS provides no paid support, but it does track Red Hat updates and patches closely, and usually makes them available within a few hours or at most a few days of the upstream provider, which it refers to for legal reasons as "a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor." Free support for CentOS can be found in numerous places around the web, and a few third parties offer modestly priced paid support for those who want it."

aabode writes "OSWeekly.com's Brandon Watts suggests that Apple should acquire Adobe. Why? 'While Apple has done a great job of developing media applications for beginners (the iLife suite is a good example of this), they could use a boost on the professional side. Granted, Final Cut Studio has become the standard when it comes to professional video editing, and Logic Studio is a great professional solution for editing audio, but what about the graphics and Web design segments of the market? If people want tools to support these interests on the Mac, then they turn to Adobe.'"

Craig Maloney writes "Over the long history of Linux, there have been many different distributions. One of the most famous distributions, love it or hate it, is the Ubuntu distribution. Ubuntu has come quickly from being the new kid on the block with the Warty Warthog release (4.10) to the most recent release Gutsy Gibbon (7.10). In that three year span, Ubuntu has grown from a handful of enthusiasts and developers to a thriving worldwide community. The Official Ubuntu Book is the official book from Canonical, which describes not only the Ubuntu distributions, but also the community from which Ubuntu is derived." Read below for the rest of Craig's review.

Today, on the last day of our 10 year anniversary navel gazing spectacular, I present the final (thank god!) chapter in my 4 part history of Slashdot. I've written about the creation, the explosion, and the corporatization. Today I talk about where we are today, and what I see as our future, and how I feel about it. Clicky click the magic link below to read the last "thrilling" chapter, and celebrate with me the fact that I won't have to spend this much time writing about Slashdot for another decade.

Today is your last chance to enter the Slashdot 10-Year Anniversary party contest. All you need to do is send pictures, videos, or whatever party evidence you can email to anniversary at slashdot dot org. The winner will be whoever sends the things that make their party look the coolest, the most nerdish etc. We've seen signs, games, etc so far... and of course, the winner gets $1k at ThinkGeek. Both the Ann Arbor and Silicon Valley parties were great. Much alcohol consumed. Old friends chatted with. New friends met. I hope many of you around the net got your t-shirts and had good times.

mytrip passed us a link to a Wired article indcating that if music industry estimates are correct Radiohead has made as much as $10 million on the 'In Rainbows' album so far. This despite the estimates of widespread piracy of the album as well. "[The estimate assumes] that approximately 1.2 million people downloaded the album from the site, and that the average price paid per album was $8 (we heard that number too, but also heard that a later, more accurate average was $5, which would result in $6 million in revenue instead).