Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Courts

Submission + - SPAM: FTC whacks four more big telemarketing scammers

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The Federal Trade Commission today settled charges with four telemarketing scammers who were charging for products that were never ordered, making bogus claims about their products, and harassing consumers with unwanted phone calls, the commission stated. With the settlements, defendants in nine of the 13 scammers charged in last year's wide-ranging FTC crackdown known as "Tele-PHONEY" have settled FTC's charges, and courts have permanently prohibited the telemarketers' illegal activity, garnered profits and suspended operations of unscrupulous telemarketers who allegedly defrauded more than 500,000 consumers, resulting in losses of more than $100 million. The settlements contain judgments totaling more than $27.6 million, although as is unfortunately the case with many of these judgments, large portions have been suspended by the courts. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Security

Submission + - Defcon, Black Hat attendee finds more dodgy ATMs (computerworlduk.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As if it weren't enough that one bogus ATM was discovered collecting card details at the Riviera in Las Vegas where Black Hat and Defcon attendees were staying, one presenter suspects that ATMs at the Rio were compromised as well. Chris Paget tried to take out $200 and the machine never gave him the money despite debiting his account. At least five other people were affected. The hotel staff allowed the machines to keep running and threatened that Paget could be prosecuted for vandalism if he unplugged them. The Secret Service confirmed on Monday that they're investigating. It could be an inside job, or the machines may be infected with malware, as was found earlier this year in Eastern Europe.
Education

Submission + - HS Student Isolates Polystyrene-eating Microbe (wired.com)

Submitted by
cmholm
cmholm writes: "Although I had for years assumed that plastics eventually biodegrade, my recent reading of Weisman's The World Without Us reminded me that just because garbage has broken down into pieces that I can't see doesn't mean it isn't still polluting the biosphere. Weisman's book suggests that we're pretty much stuck with most plastics until something evolves to eat them. Perhaps we just need to introduce the diner to the dinner. A Waterloo, Ontario teen's 2008 science fair experiment found polystyrene's match in the team of the relatively uncommon Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas bacterias. At 37 degrees and optimal bacterial concentration, with a bit of sodium acetate thrown in, Burd achieved 43 per cent degradation within six weeks, rather than thousands of years."
United States

Submission + - Guy Protests Verizon Privacy Policy at CEO's Home (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by JagsLive
JagsLive writes: Prankster Gets Verizon's CEO Private Address, Visits Him to Protest His Privacy Policies Using a Megaphone

John Hargrave tracked down Verizon CEO's private address and cellphone number. Then he went to his home--megaphone in hand--to ask him to stop Verizon's lousy privacy policies. The video is quite funny and his message is clear:

  "When we don't have privacy, then freaks with bullhorns start showing up. Keep our phone numbers unlisted. Keep our cellphone records private. Keep us safe in your loving arms, Ivan."

So damn right. To give you an idea about how easy it was to get this information, the only thing that John did was sign up for one of those "free cell phone records" listings and scan it for the cells and home addresses of the CEOs from the big three: Randall Stephenson of AT&T, Dan Hesse of Sprint Nextel, and Ivan Seidenberg of Verizon.

There were a lot of Stephensons and Hesses, but only one Ivan Seidenberg. He confirmed the information and off he went in his car, ready to deliver his message about how important privacy is by showing it exactly how these awful information keeping could affect us.

Gizmodo : http://gizmodo.com/5320173/prankster-gets-verizons-ceo-private-address-visits-him-to-protest-his-privacy-policies-using-a-megaphone
Quickies

Submission + - UK Supermarket Powered by Shoppers Kinetic Energy (dailytech.com) 1

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Kinetic energy harvesting is one of the newest and hottest fields in alternative energy. With the world's inhabitants constantly in motion — particularly people and cars — there's ample opportunity to find ways to turn some of this energy into power.

California-based AEST has developed a road plate technology that create electricity when pressure is applied to it, such as a car driving over it. A system of 20 of its plates can generate 10,000 to 12,000 kWh per day and costs approximately $2.5M USD to deploy. With power in the U.S. at over $0.10/kWh, that's a a savings of over $1,000 a day and over $300,000 per year. At that rate the system will repay itself in just over 6 years.

England's third largest supermarket chain, Sainsbury is making a push to go green. Among its many efforts is to trial a larger deployment of the AEST plates at one of its stores, in Northampton, England. The plates will generate 30kw of green energy an hour, enough to power the store's lighting and computers.

The plates work as a hydraulic system. When pressure is applied, fluid moves through pumps, which in turn drives a generator.

DailyTech : http://www.dailytech.com/England+Supermarket+is+Powered+by+Shoppers+Kinetic+Energy/article15476.htm
Security

Submission + - MS says "secret questions" suck, has alter (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: New Scientist writes up two interesting security papers from Microsoft Research. One finds that the "secret questions" used for password resets on the big four webmail services can be easily be guessed. The other suggests an alternative, where users specify a few close friends who they must use to verify their identity and unlock a frozen account. The article points out that since hacking a webmail account typically makes it possible to compromise many other online accounts, securing them better is a priority.
Announcements

Submission + - 6000 year old tomb complex discovered 2

Submitted by duh P3rf3ss3r
duh P3rf3ss3r writes: National Geographic reports that a 6000 year old tomb complex on 200 hectares (500 acres) has been discovered on the Salisbury Plain just 24 km (15 miles) from Stonehenge. The site has come as a surprise to the archaeologists who had thought that the area had been studied in such depth that few discoveries of such magnitude remained. The site, fully 1000 years older than Stonehenge, has been called "Britain's oldest architecture".
Intel

Submission + - Intel explains future Core i7, i5, i3 branding (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by
mr_sifter
mr_sifter writes: "Intel has spilled the beans on its future CPU naming, claiming to have acted in an effort to simplify things, but in effect, quite the opposite has happened. The Core 2 Duo and Quad brands will vanish and will be modified progressively after Lynnfield arrives with Core i3, i5 and i7 monikers. That's not to say Lynnfield equals Core i5 though. Instead, Lynnfield will span Core i5 and Core i7 brands and the choice of brand will vary between features (like HyperThreading) and processor performance."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - big blasts from the past: hardware hall of fame (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
GMGruman
GMGruman writes: "New products come and go, but only a few examples of computer hardware stand the test of time as equipment that first resets its product space and then just keeps chugging along even as imitators and improvements follow. Eric Knorr amd his InfoWorld colleagues pick the dozen most enduring computer hardware of all time, from mainframes and minis to PCs and PDAs. Indulge in a little nostalgia."
Education

Submission + - NY Charter School Tries Hiring Good Teachers (nytimes.com)

Submitted by toppavak
toppavak writes: The NY Times reports on a New York Charter School that will be opening this year with a basic philosophy that (unfortunately) will be revolutionary for public schools: hiring competent teachers and paying them well. Teachers will make $125,000 a year and will be eligible for $25,000 bonuses for school-wide performance. Founder Zeke M. Vanderhoek has assembled a team of "master" teachers after a nationwide search including Ivy-league graduates, school teachers and, interestingly enough, the ex-head strength and conditioning coach for the LA Lakers. Mr. Vanderhoek recognizes that its not all in a resume, having visited each candidate in person and observing their teaching:

The eight winning candidates, he said, have some common traits, like a high "engagement factor," as measured by the portion of a given time frame during which students seem so focused that they almost forget they are in class. They were expert at redirecting potential troublemakers, a crucial skill for middle school teachers. And they possessed a contagious enthusiasm — which Rhena Jasey, 30, Harvard Class of 2001, who has been teaching at a school in Maplewood, N.J., conveyed by introducing a math lesson with, "Oh, this is the fun part because I looooooove math!" Says Mr. Vanderhoek: "You couldn't help but get excited." Hired.

The teachers will earn their keep by doubling duty as vice principals, coaches and other staff. I can only hope this school becomes wildly successful and the model spreads quickly.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Monkey Island to return (telltalegames.com)

Submitted by Briareos
Briareos writes: Fresh off the Telltale Games RSS feed:

"We just put out a joint press release with LucasArts announcing not one, but TWO new Monkey Island projects headed your way: Tales of Monkey Island, a new five-part series from Telltale, and The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, an enhanced rerelease of the game that started it all. That's right, folks. This summer you're going to be smacked upside the head by so much Monkey Island goodness you won't be able to stand it."

Can you say w00t?
The Internet

Submission + - Conf. Bd Admits Plagiarism, Pulls Copyright Report

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Conference Board of Canada has withdrawn all three reports on intellectual property after allegations this week by Michael Geist of plagiarism. The organization now admits that its report on copyright was plagiarized from U.S. copyright lobby groups.
Math

Submission + - 16-year old solves the Bernoulli-sequence (www.dt.se) 6

Submitted by
IntMurr
IntMurr writes: "A swedish 16-year old student computes a closed formula for the Bernoulli-sequence after 4 months over his mathbooks. Now the university of Uppsala is checking ahis solutions for lacks and cracks, but he has already recieved an invitation for studies at the university, almost 3 years before a normal student start there. Personal at the mathematic faculty of Uppsala says "this is a very skillful proof". So far only links avaliable in Swedish."
Censorship

Submission + - Spanish SGAE goes where no RIAA has gone before (elmundo.es)

Submitted by Planetalia
Planetalia writes: Just when you thought RIAA — sueing deceased people, sick pepole, children and elders — had reached its limit, the spanish version of it — SGAE — has gone where no other RIAA has gone before. On May 26th, four people knocked on the door of Jose Manuel Carrasco — the owner of two spanish torrent sites, told him they had a search warrant and proceeded to rummage for over two hours throughout his house, testing computers and browsing through personal information like contacts and emails. During that time, Jose Manuel managed to reach his lawyer and it turned out that these people did not actually have a search warrant, and had simply lied to get entry to the house. They had to leave the hard drives behind, and on leaving one of them told Jose Manuel "We shouldn't have allowed you to speak to your lawyer".

Slashdot Top Deals

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. -- Thomas Edison

Close