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The Internet

Submission + - Wikileaks Vows Release '7x' Bigger Than Iraq Logs (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: Wikileaks has promised to release a load of information seven times bigger than the Iraq War Logs, which raised the Internet group's profile around the world and caused some nations to take notice of the issue of leaks of top-secret documents online. In a note on Twitter, Wikileaks said, 'Next release is 7x the size of the Iraq War Logs. Intense pressure over it for months,' and asked supporters to continue donating to the cause. A District Court in Stockholm last Thursday decided to detain Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, 'on probable cause suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.' Wikileaks did not say what the new release of information would be about.

Submission + - Guy Fined For Posting Links To Official Broadcast (techdirt.com) 1

Submitted by hcs_$reboot
hcs_$reboot writes: Over in Sweden, it appears that a guy has been fined for linking to an online broadcast of a hockey game. We've heard stories of people getting in trouble merely for linking to unauthorized content, but this story is even more ridiculous. The guy wasn't linking to unauthorized content. He was linking to an online video feed from the official broadcaster, Canal Plus.
The issue was that Canal Plus was apparently technically incompetent in how they set up the feeds, and never intended to make the feeds public.

Submission + - Bruce Schneier Vs. The TSA (schneier.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Schneier has posted a huge recap of the TSA controversy, including more information about the lawsuit he joined to ban them. There's too much news to summarize, but it covers everything from Penn of Penn & Teller and Dave Barry's grope stories, other Israeli experts who say this isn't needed and hasn't ever stopped a bomb, the four-year-old girl who was traumatized by being groped and much, much more.
AI

Free-Form Linguistic Input In Mathematica 8 84

Posted by Soulskill from the differentiates-concepts-and-integrates-words dept.
vbraga writes "With the release of Mathematica 8, it now allows input through free-form English instead of the Mathematica syntax, just like the Wolfram|Alpha engine. The results are impressive. From the blog post: 'I routinely found myself using free-form linguistics as an integral part of longer computations — randomly interspersing Mathematica syntax and free-form linguistics on different lines in a Mathematica session, and just using whichever was most convenient for a particular input. And here's an exciting part: in Mathematica 8 the free-form linguistics doesn't just operate line-by-line. It knows the context in which it's used in a notebook, so you can use it to build things up.'"
Linux

Submission + - Kernel Tracing with LTTng on Ubuntu Maverick (blogspot.com)

Submitted by francis-giraldeau
francis-giraldeau writes: Linux Tracing Toolkit (LTTng) provides high performance kernel tracing for Linux. This is the killer app for system level debugging and performance tuning. It's now easier to install than ever with packages released for Ubuntu Maverick. The short introduction to kernel tracing shows how to interpret a simple kernel trace and relate it to strace. I would like to ask slashdot readers about what they would expect as features for kernel tracing analysis tool, because I'm starting my PhD on this topic and looking for ideas. Also, I wonder why LTTng is not mainline yet, despite the fact that it's highly valuable. Will Linus Torvalds see the light for 2011?
Government

Submission + - More than 2Bil records in US monitoring database (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: "Thousands of US sex offenders, prisoners on parole and other convicts were left unmonitored after an electronic tagging system shut down because of data overload. BI Incorporated, which runs the system, reached its data threshold — more than two billion records — on Tuesday. This left authorities across 49 states unaware of offenders' movement for about 12 hours."

2 Billion records??
Government

Submission + - How Do Your Candidates Stand on Issues For Nerds?

Submitted by Trevin
Trevin writes: With the general elections coming up in the U.S., I want to know what each of the candidates' positions are regarding the issues that matter to me. But the mainstream media seems concerned only with such matters as the economy, health care, environment, and national defense. No mention is made of things like copyright and patent reform, privacy, cyber security, and scientific research. So I've written a letter to the candidates for U.S. Senator in my state (California) asking what they support.

Since the election is less than a month away I didn't have time to look up all of the issues I wanted to ask about, but following I present the letter I sent. I tried to be neutral in wording the questions in order to avoid biasing the candidate's response. I would encourage others to send similar letters of inquiry, adding or modifying questions that interest you, to encourage our candidates to investigate these topics and take informed opinions to the legislature.
---

Dear U.S. Senatorial candidates,

I'm doing my research for the upcoming 2010 general elections, and for the office of United States Senator for California there are questions I have regarding the candidates' support for issues which are not covered by the mainstream media. As a computer software developer, I am mostly concerned with government policies regarding the electronic frontier. Would you please let me know where you stand on the following matters. Your feedback will help me determine how I will vote in the next few weeks.

Do you believe that the term of copyrighted works before entering the public domain at 120 years is fair, that it should be reduced, or that it should be extended? By what amount should it be changed?

Do you believe that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 is effective and sufficient for protecting copyrighted works, that it should contain more restrictions, or that it should contain fewer restrictions?

Do you support or oppose the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in its current form?

Do you support or oppose the proposed Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act (COICA)?

Do you believe Internet service providers (ISP's) should be liable for computer user's activity passing through their network which is illegal? What about for activity which is allegedly illegal? Should ISP's be required to monitor their networks for illegal activity?

Do you believe that the Transportation Security Administration should be allowed or prohibited from searching the contents of travelers' electronic devices (laptops, portable music players, personal digital assistants), with or without cause?

Do you believe that police officers and other enforcement agents should be allowed to search the contents of suspects' computers without a warrant, incident to an arrest?

Do you believe that the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 has been effective in reducing the amount of fraudulent and malicious email on the Internet? Has it been effective in reducing the amount of unwanted but otherwise legitimate unsolicited email? Has it been effective in prosecuting willful spammers?

Do you believe that peer-to-peer (P2P) computer file sharing has a legitimate purpose for the efficient mass distribution of large files over the Internet, or do you believe that P2P serves illegal purposes and should be banned?

Do you believe that computer software algorithms should be patentable either as a whole application or as individual components? Should the term for software patents be the same as for other inventions (14-20 years) or different?

What is your opinion of patent holders who do not manufacture or market any product using the patented invention, but actively prevent other companies from producing potentially infringing products?

Do you support or oppose legislation mandating the use of specific technologies on electronic equipment sold in the United States, such as the inclusion of "trusted computing" devices in computers or video equipment that checks the "broadcast flag"?

Do you believe that consumers who have purchased electronic devices (including computers, video game equipment, home entertainment components, etc.) should be allowed to use such equipment however they wish and make modifications to those devices for their own personal use, or that the manufacturer of such equipment should have control over how those devices are used and whether any modifications are allowed?

Do you support the use of industry standard formats for the electronic publication of government documents and media (such as plain text, Vorbis, and Theora) or the use of commonly used proprietary formats (such as Microsoft Word, MPEG, and AVI)?

Do you believe that hardware and software companies should be required or encouraged to use and comply with published industry standards (ISO, IEEE, ANSI, RFC, etc.) for interoperability with other vendor's products whether competing or cooperative, or that they should be allowed to use proprietary interfaces and protocols which restrict compatibility to the company's own products? Or is this a matter which the government should not legislate and let the market work out?

Do you believe that the National Security Agency has the right and duty to monitor domestic phone calls, text messaging, email, web browsing, and other electronic communication? For what purposes and under what conditions should it be allowed?

Do you support electronic voting, and if so do you believe electronic voting machines should be developed as closed-source systems (only the manufacturer knows how they work) or as open-source systems (the design and code is available for public scrutiny)?

Thank you for your time.
Earth

Submission + - US. Military Orders Less Dependence on Fossil Fuel

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Tthe NY Times reports that it can cost hundreds of dollars to get each gallon of traditional fuel to forward base camps in Afghanistan, so with enemy fighters increasingly attacking American fuel supply convoys crossing the Khyber Pass from Pakistan, the military is pushing aggressively to develop, test and deploy renewable energy to decrease its need to transport fossil fuels. “Fossil fuel is the No. 1 thing we import to Afghanistan,” says Ray Mabus, the Navy secretary, “and guarding that fuel is keeping the troops from doing what they were sent there to do, to fight or engage local people.” The 150 Marines of Company I, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, will be the first to take renewable technology into a battle zone, bringing portable solar panels that fold up into boxes; energy-conserving lights; solar tent shields that provide shade and electricity; solar chargers for computers and communications equipment replacing diesel and kerosene-based fuels that would ordinarily generate power to run their encampment. The new goal of the Marines is to make the more peripheral sites sustain themselves with the kind of renewable technology carried by Company I, since solar electricity can be generated right on the battlefield. “It’s going to make Marines more lethal because they will be able to move from one place to the other without having to wait for a logistics convoy to follow them around on the battlefield,” says Capt. Adorjan Ferenczy, an engineer officer at the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab."
Patents

Submission + - Apple loses $625e6 in Cover Flow patent lawsuit (nytimes.com)

Submitted by l00sr
l00sr writes: A jury in eastern Texas has just convicted Apple of violating patents relating to Cover Flow, Spotlight, and other operating system features, awarding the plaintiff $625 million in damages. The plaintiff, Mirror Worlds, is a company founded by Yale computer science professor David Gelernter. If upheld, the award will be one of the largest in patent history. Side note: Gelernter was also in the news in 1993 when he injured by a mail bomb sent by the infamous Unabomber.

Submission + - FSF 25 years October 3, 1985 (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 25 years of the Free Software Foundation. On this day, 25 years ago, Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation. He had been the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Lab. Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgement or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation. The original license was written by Stallman. Stallman had subsequently written a large number of GNU tools, but the license was his most important contribution.
Science

Submission + - 2010 Ig Nobel Winners Announced (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: Having trouble breathing? Try riding a roller-coaster. Really. A pair of Dutch researchers who discovered that the symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride are among this year’s winner of the Ig Nobel awards, the infamous annual tribute to scientific research that seems wacky — but also has real world applications. FoxNews.com has interviews with several award winners, who are all ecstatic to win — despite the fact that they're all gently being poked fun at.

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