Ashbory - Slashdot User

Submission + - MIT student arrested for wearing breadboard

Submitted by

gillbates

on Friday September 21, 2007 @02:49PM

gillbates writes: "An MIT student was arrested at Logan Airport for wearing a solderless breadboard, which officials described as a "fake bomb". According to authorities, "Had she not followed the protocol, we might have used deadly force." The article doesn't say that she made any threats or otherwise indicated that it was a bomb. I can't help but wonder what implications this has for those of us who must routinely fly with prototype electronic devices (such as those en route to CES)."

Submission + - Vista burns laptop hard disks - Failure eight time (4sysops.com)

Submitted by gosel on Friday September 21, 2007 @02:47PM

gosel writes: Vista heats-up hard disks more than XP does. Hard disks in idle mode have a five to seven degree Celsius higher temperature and hard disks in operation are seven to nine degrees warmer than under XP. The hard disk's temperature can get ten degrees higher than the vendors' specifications allow.

Submission + - RIAA Targets New Colleges, Still Avoids Harvard

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Friday September 21, 2007 @11:02AM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Billboard reports that the RIAA has filed its eighth round of "early settlement" letters to twenty-two colleges. Continuing its practice of avoiding Harvard, the RIAA's new round does not include any letters to that institution, where certain law professors have counseled resistance to the RIAA and told the RIAA to "take a hike". The unlucky institutions on the receiving end of the 403 new letters include Arizona State University (35 pre-litigation settlement letters), Carnegie Mellon University (13), Cornell University (19), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (30), Michigan State University (16), North Dakota State University (17), Purdue University — West Lafayette and Calumet campuses (49), University of California — Santa Barbara (13), University of Connecticut (17), University of Maryland — College Park (23), University of Massachusetts — Amherst and Boston campuses (52), University of Nebraska — Lincoln (13), University of Pennsylvania (31), University of Pittsburgh (14), University of Wisconsin — Eau Claire, Madison, Milwaukee, Stevens Point, Stout and Whitewater campuses (62)."

Submission + - Do Not Call listings to expire in 2008. (yahoo.com)

Submitted by

Ant

on Friday September 21, 2007 @10:53AM

Ant writes: "Yahoo! News report that the cherished dinner hour void of telemarketers could vanish next year for millions of people when phone numbers begin dropping off the national/United States (U.S.)'s Do Not Call list. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which oversees the list, says there is a simple fix. But some lawmakers think it is a hassle to expect people to re-register their phone numbers every five years. Numbers placed on the registry, begun in June 2003, are valid for five years. For the millions of people who signed onto the list in its early days, their numbers will automatically drop off beginning next June if they do not enroll again... Seen on Blue's News."

Submission + - Social Spiders Create Giant Network in Texas (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

klenwell

on Friday August 31, 2007 @12:01PM

klenwell writes: "The New York Times reports today on a giant web created by millions of social spiders in a north Texas park: can arachno-net succeed where other rural networking technologies have failed?"

Submission + - New rootkit from Sony (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by techno-vampire on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:08PM

techno-vampire writes: An article in The Register reports that a new USB fingerprint authentication device from Sony repeats the CD rootkit exploit of two years ago. The MicroVault USM-F fingerprint reader software bundled with the stick installs a hidden directory under Windows. Either they didn't learn from the PR nightmare last time, or they really thought they'd get away with it this time, but in either case, smooth move, Mr. ExLax!

Submission + - Controversial web site mocks prayer. (prayforthem.org)

Submitted by

electrongunner

on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:04PM

electrongunner writes: "In an apparent response to the recent rantings of Wiley Drake, a former leader of the Southern Baptist Convention who called on his followers to pray for the death of the people who filed an IRS complaint against him, a controversial new web site called PrayForThem.org recently unveiled a distributed online prayer system whose sole purpose is to encourage people from around the world to join together to pray for the death of "those who are most in need of dying". In an email interview, the anonymous founder of the site said, "We don't think the Southern Baptists or any other religious denomination should corner the market on god's wrath. I put the site together to make fun of these idiots who think prayer can be used to petition any deity for anything. With my online prayer scheduler, you can schedule prayers to any major deity (and most minor ones) to bring about the demise of whoever you want by a variety of natural causes. I didn't include any methods of death that could be construed as advocating human to human violence. If it turns out that prayers really do work, well...sorry George Bush and Dick Cheney, but it was apparently god's will. Who am I to judge?""

Microsoft Forces Shutdown of Autopatcher 290

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @04:20PM from the hooray-for-lawyers dept.

kaufmanmoore writes "Posts on Neowin and Autopatcher's site announce Microsoft has forced the closure of the Autopatcher download section. Details are scarce as to the exact reason for the take down after over 4 years of availability, but an official from Microsoft legal says that it has nothing to do with Windows Genuine Advantage. Goodbye to another useful tool that helped sysadmins apply Microsoft's numerous patches."

Submission + - Autopatcher shut down by Microsoft? (autopatcher.com)

Submitted by

kimvette

on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @04:13PM

kimvette writes: "Apparently Microsoft wants users to choose alternatives to Windows, since they are now shutting down third-party tools which help make deployments and maintenance of Windows easier. From autopatcher:

Sad day Posted by Antonis Kaladis on August 29th, 2007 | Today we received an e-mail from Microsoft, requesting the immediate take-down of the download page, which of course means that AutoPatcher is probably history. As much as we disagree, we can do very little, and although the download page is merely a collection of mirrors, we took the download page down. We would like to thank you for your support. For the past 4 years, it has been a blast. Unfortunately, it seems like it's the end of AutoPatcher as we know it. Antonis Kaladis

If you're on dialup in rural areas and want to update Windows, or are in a commercial setting where you have a Cable connection with an unpublished cap, you're pretty much screwed when it comes to Windows updates.

Thanks, Microsoft. It's great to know that you have your paying customers in mind, as usual. Making the Windows experience worse, that is."

Submission + - "Viacom hit me for infringing my own copyright (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by

Chris Knight

on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @02:23PM

Chris Knight writes: "Long story short: I ran for school board where I live this past fall and created some TV commercials including this one with a "Star Wars" theme. A few months ago VH1 grabbed the commercial from YouTube and featured it in a segment of its show "Web Junk 2.0". Neither VH1 or its parent company Viacom told me they were doing this or asked my permission to use it, but I didn't mind it if they did. It was great to see the commercial was being enjoyed by a far wider audience than I'd expected. I was honored that they chose to use it and thought that Aries Spears's commentary about it was pretty hilarious, so I posted a clip of VH1's segment on YouTube so that I could put it on my blog. This morning I got an e-mail from YouTube saying that the video has been pulled because Viacom is claiming that I'm violating its copyright. Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on THEIR copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright! Talk about chutzpah! Needless to say, I would like to fight this: not for any kind of monetary compensation, but just for the right to employ my own self-created material per Fair Use."

Submission + - Men allegedly Googled 'how to blow up ATMs'

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @09:25AM

An anonymous reader writes: THREE Sydney men charged with conspiring to blow up ATMs with powerful homemade explosive, allegedly obtained information on how to do it from the internet, police said today. The men, who were among five arrested yesterday in a joint operation by federal and NSW police, were denied bail by a Sydney court today. Fadi Bassil, 20, from Lakemba, Elias Taouk, 19, from Kingsgrove, and Badawi Nassour, 20, of Greenacre, were all remanded in custody until October 23. A fourth man, Linley Desire Jose Anthony, was refused bail when he appeared in the same court yesterday. The fifth was released after questioning by police. Police said the arrests followed a tip-off from Northern Territory authorities about the purchase of otherwise legal chemicals that could be used in the manufacture of nitroglycerine. Police documents tendered in Sydney Central Local Court said the men bought 23 litres of chemicals as well as mixing equipment such as beakers, thermometers and droppers from a Darwin company. The products could have been used to manufacture up to 40kg of nitroglycerine, police said. Police said internet surveillance revealed that Mr Bassil had Googled "how to blow up ATM machines" and "how much money is kept in bank ATMs". The men also had Googled a recipe for the explosives, and eventually gained all they needed from the internet in terms of knowledge and know-how to carry out the job, police said. They said the men discussed by mobile phone and SMS how to best mix the chemicals to form the explosive and when and where to carry out tests using fireworks as detonators. Mr Taouk was allegedly intercepted fantasising about what he would do with the loot from the planned roberies. "Taouk said he couldn't wait to be on video and couldn't wait until he parked his Porsche in front of Roxy's (nightclub) in Parramatta," the police documents stated. When refusing bail today, Magistrate Paul Lyon said: "the sheer volume of the substance takes it into the serious category". Looks like Google is giving up search history to the man. http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,22327 716-5005940,00.html

Submission + - Firefox remote execution (xs-sniper.com)

Submitted by on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @12:32AM

An anonymous reader writes: From the article — "Once again, a flaw in the URI handling behavior allows for remote command execution. UNREGISTER ALL UNNECESSARY URIs NOW! This example shows flaws in Firefox, Netscape, and Mozilla browsers... other browsers are affected by related vulnerabilities."

cbf adding more, gogo editor!

Slashdot Top Deals