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Android

Why Apple's DUI Checkpoint App Ban Is Stupid 228

Posted by timothy from the tip-of-the-corporate-crony-iceberg dept.
hookskat writes "Reason.tv Editor in Chief Nick Gillespie reacts to Apple's decision to ban DUI Checkpoint Apps from the App Store, writing: 'Let me add something even more damning of this latest development in corporate cave-ins to legally protected free speech and I'm gonna bold it for emphasis: Some police departments actually supply the data used in such apps because they reduce the number of drunk drivers on the roads! Somehow, I'm thinking that Steve Jobs circa 1984...would have told U.S. senators sending threatening letters about computer-based info sharing to take a hike. Or at least to spend time on, I don't know, creating a freaking budget for the country rather than worrying about regulating something that helps reduce impaired driving.' Last month, after RIM caved on the same question, Reason.tv released this video on the subject of banning DUI checkpoint apps."
Crime

Man Ordered At Gunpoint To Hand Over Phone For Recording Cops 983

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-shoot-or-we'll-shoot dept.
HungryHobo writes with this excerpt from a story at Pixiq: "Miami Beach police did their best to destroy a citizen video that shows them shooting a man to death in a hail of bullets on Memorial Day. First, police pointed their guns at the man who shot the video, according to a Miami Herald interview with the videographer. Then they ordered the man and his girlfriend out of the car and threw them down to the ground, yelling, 'you want to be f****** paparazzi?' Then they snatched the cell phone from his hand and slammed it to the ground before stomping on it. Then they placed the smashed phone in the videographer's back pocket as he was laying down on the ground."
Cellphones

White iPhone 4 Coming Today 195

Posted by samzenpus from the black-tulip dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Initially, the white iPhone 4 will be available in 28 countries including the US, UK, Australia, China, Japan, and Italy. It will be available for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model with a new two year agreement through the Apple Store, AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores (as rumored earlier) and select Apple Authorized Resellers."

Submission + - NYC Resistor: DIY hackers doing awesome things (motherboard.tv)

Submitted by HansonMB
HansonMB writes: Founded by a handful of friends who wanted a place to tinker with electronics and meet like-minded hackers for good, NYC Resistor. has blossomed into one of the country’s most influential hackerspaces. On any given Thursday night, their cozy, cluttered loft workshop is crawling with a diverse crowd of hardcore tinkerers and curious newcomers. Throwing some caution and many user warranties to the wind, they’re there to build, refine, break and share everything from toy robots to intricate paper sculpture to open source musical instruments.
Privacy

Bizarre Porn Raid Underscores Wi-Fi Privacy Risks 964

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stranger-than-fiction dept.
alphadogg writes "Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of 'pedophile!' and 'pornographer!' stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo homeowner didn't need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents. That new wireless router. He'd gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his Internet connection, he thought. Sure enough, that was the case. Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale. Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router."
Chrome

Submission + - Google Fixes 6 High-Risk Chrome Bugs, Pays $8500 (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Google has released a new version of its Chrome browser, fixing six high-risk security bugs in the process and paying out $8,500 in bug bounties along the way.

The latest version of Chrome, version 10.0.648.204, also includes a number of other new features for some of the supported platforms. The Linux version of Chrome now supports the password manager for Linux, as well as some performance and stability upgrades.
Businesses

Submission + - Enterprises Support Thousands Of Obsolete Apps (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
justice4all
justice4all writes: "Legacy applications are an increasing burden despite the latest modernisation options, says Capgemini

Businesses are supporting millions of obsolete applications that no longer deliver business value, according to a report issued today.

Some global enterprises have as many as 10,000 applications in their IT estates and are missing out potential cost savings and efficiencies by not rationalising them, according to the first annual Applications Landscape report from Capgemini, published with HP, based on interviews with nearly 100 IT decision makers from Europe and the US.

Highlighting application bloat
While 85 percent of these IT decision makers said their application portfolios were in need of rationalisation, a further 60 percent admitted to currently supporting ‘more’ or ‘far more’ applications than are necessary to run their business."

Submission + - Microsoft Urges Office Users To Block Flash Player (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Batblue
Batblue writes: "Microsoft has urged users of older Office suites to install and run a complicated tool to protect themselves against ongoing attacks exploiting an unpatched bug in Adobe's Flash Player.

"For users of Office prior to 2010, the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) can help," said Andrew Roths and Chengyun Chu, a manager and security engineer, respectively, with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). "Turning on EMET for the core Office applications will enable a number of security protections called 'security mitigations'," the pair wrote in a post to the company's Security Research & Defense blog.

EMET is a tool designed for advanced users, primarily enterprise IT pros, that manually enables ASLR (address space layout randomization) and DEP (data execution prevention) for specific applications. ASLR and DEP are two anti-exploit technologies included with Windows. Adobe confirmed that attackers were exploiting an unpatched bug in Flash Player by sending potential victims malicious Microsoft Excel documents."
Facebook

Submission + - Does Facebook Kill Authenticity? 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Steve Cheney writes that the problem with tying internet-wide identity to a broadcast network like Facebook is that people don’t want one normalized identity, either in real life, or virtually. "People yearn to be individuals. They want to be authentic. They have numerous different groups of real-life friends. They stylize conversations. They are emotional and have an innate need to connect on different levels with different people," writes Cheney adding that the recent decision by a number of sites, including TechCrunch, to adopt Facebook commenting highlights the problem where the integration of the formatting and fonts is so strong that when you're reading comments you actuallyfeel like you are on Facebook, not a tech focused vertical site. "Facebook’s insistence that you have one identity across the web is both short-sighted and asinine, and people I talk to are starting to realize this," concludes Cheney. "Fact is, one social network will not rule the web... People are simply way too social to allow that.""
IT

Submission + - A letter on behalf of the world's PC fixers (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "PC Pro's Steve Cassidy has written a letter on behalf of all the put-upon techies who've ever been called by a friend to fix their PC. His bile is directed at a friend who put a DVD bought on holiday into their laptop, and then wondered what went wrong.

"Once you stuck that DVD in there and started saying 'yes, OK' to every resulting dialog box, you sank the whole thing," Cassidy writes. "It doesn’t take 10 minutes to sort that out; it requires a complete machine reload to properly guarantee the infection is history."

"No, there is no neat and handy way I’ve been keeping secret that allows you to retain your extensive collection of stolen software licences loaded on that laptop. I do disaster recovery, not disaster participation.""
Politics

Submission + - Hosni Mubarak steps down. 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: BBC news reports that Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has stepped down and the Army council is taking temporary control.
Transportation

Obama Calling For $53B For High Speed Rail 1026

Posted by samzenpus from the lyle-lanley-approved dept.
Antisyzygy writes "President Obama is calling for $53B to be appropriated for the construction of high-speed rail in the United States over the next 6 years. Assuming Congress approves this plan, the funding would be spent on developing and/or improving trains that travel at approximately 250 miles/hour, as well as spent on connecting existing rail lines to new developed high speed lines."
Microsoft

Hotmail Launches Accounts You Can Throw Away 286

Posted by timothy from the at-last-a-feature-that-leads-gmail dept.
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from CNET: "Today, Hotmail is getting a new feature aimed at 'e-mail enthusiasts,' which lets anyone create multiple e-mail accounts that can be read, replied to, and managed from their everyday e-mail inbox. These additional e-mail addresses can be had in the same manner as signing up for new accounts, but they require no extra log-ins or upkeep. ... The idea is to give users a safe way to provide third parties with an e-mail address, without giving up the address they've provided to family and friends, which, if compromised, can end the usefulness of that particular account. Each user will be able to create up to five aliases, any of which can be deleted and replaced with another at any time. Over time, Microsoft will increase that limit to 15 aliases per account, making it so that the true heavy users won't need to juggle between two or more Hotmail accounts."
Intel

Submission + - Asus, Gigabyte to replace all Sandy Bridge boards (techreport.com)

Submitted by J. Dzhugashvili
J. Dzhugashvili writes: In the wake of Intel's announcement that all existing Sandy Bridge chipsets have a bug that causes degraded Serial ATA performance, top-tier motherboard makers Asus and Gigabyte have made public statements regarding their return policy for affected boards. Asus is promising 'hassle-free return and/or replacement', while Gigabyte says owners of affected boards are entitled to a full refund or replacement—and it recommends that users seek refunds. Both companies are advising users to contact the original place of purchase to proceed. On a related note, Gigabyte has announced that new Sandy Bridge motherboards with bug-free chipsets will be available in volume in April.

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