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Books

Submission + - Rowling wins Lexicon Lawsuit

Submitted by SpicyLemon
SpicyLemon writes: According to guardian.co.uk, JK Rowling has won her lawsuit against RDR Books.

JK Rowling has won her claim that a fan violated her copyright with plans to publish an A to Z of Harry Potter. A US judge ruled today that the unauthorised guide would cause her irreparable harm as a writer.

Comment Re:Some specs (Score 2, Informative) 251

by Trebonius (#24658511) Attached to: Dell's Subnotebook To Ship With Ubuntu

Actually, your article clearly states that the Intel processor uses less power than the Athlon toward the end. The point of that article to compare two *desktop* solutions, meaning complete motherboards.

In this case, the total AMD system uses less power than the total Intel system, which is noteworthy, but doesn't necessarily have any bearing at all on this particular laptop, or on the Atom processor itself.
Security

Russia and Georgia Engaged In a Cyberwar 276

Posted by kdawson from the who-shot-first dept.
doctorfaustus writes "I first picked this up in bits and pieces last week off Daily Rotation. A more in-depth story is available at ZDNet, which reports 'a week's worth of speculations around Russian Internet forums have finally materialized into a coordinated cyber attack against Georgia's Internet infrastructure. The attacks have already managed to compromise several government web sites, with continuing DDoS attacks against numerous other Georgian government sites, prompting the government to switch to hosting locations to the US, with Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs undertaking a desperate step in order to disseminate real-time information by moving to a Blogspot account.' There is a question whether the computer work is being done by the Russian military or others. ZDNet's story offers further analysis of the attacks themselves and their origins. Some pretty good reporting." And reader redbu11 contributes the news that Georgia seems to be censoring access to all Russian websites, as confirmed by a Georgian looking glass/nslookup tool. The access is blocked on DNS level (Italy censored the Pirate Bay in the same way). Here are a couple of screenshots (in a language other than English) as of Aug 12th 5:40 pm: www.linux.ru nslookup — FAIL, www.cnn.com nslookup — OK.

ComputerWorld guy CWmike adds "In an intriguing cyberalliance, two Estonian computer experts are heading to Georgia to keep the country's networks running amid an intense military confrontation with Russia. Poland has lent space on its president's Web page for Georgia to post updates on its ongoing conflict with Russia. Estonia is also now hosting Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site."
Education

Home Science Under Attack In Massachusetts 1334

Posted by kdawson from the and-the-yellow-phthalate-too dept.
An anonymous reader tips a guest posting up on the MAKE Magazine blog by the author of the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. It seems that authorities in Massachusetts have raided a home chemistry lab, apparently without a warrant, and made off with all of its contents. Here's the local article from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. "Victor Deeb, a retired chemist who lives in Marlboro, has finally been allowed to return to his Fremont Street home, after Massachusetts authorities spent three days ransacking his basement lab and making off with its contents. Deeb is not accused of making methamphetamine or other illegal drugs. He's not accused of aiding terrorists, synthesizing explosives, nor even of making illegal fireworks. Deeb fell afoul of the Massachusetts authorities for... doing experiments... Pamela Wilderman, the code enforcement officer for [the Massachusetts town of] Marlboro stated, 'I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation.' Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman's words into plain English: 'Mr. Deeb hasn't actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don't like what he's doing because I'm ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I'll abuse my power to steal his property and shut him down.'"
The Military

Military Spends $4.4M To Supersize Net Monitoring 76

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-its-august dept.
coondoggie writes "Bigger, better, faster, more are the driving themes behind the advanced network monitoring technology BBN Technologies is building for the military. The high-tech firm got a $4.4 million contract today from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop novel, scalable attack detection algorithms; a flexible and expandable architecture for implementing and deploying the algorithms; and an execution environment for traffic inspection and algorithm execution. The network monitoring system is being developed under DARPA's Scalable Network Monitoring program which seeks to bolt down network security in the face of cyber attacks that have grown more subtle and sophisticated."
Technology

Smart Contact Lenses 109

Posted by samzenpus from the no-more-tears dept.
Iddo Genuth writes "Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have recently designed a contact lens prototype with a built-in pressure sensor using a novel process that etches tiny electrical circuits within a soft polymer material. The new development could help glaucoma patients to measure their current risk factor, thus replacing the current methods which require constant visits to a clinician."
Censorship

YouTube Yanks Free Tibet Video After IOC Pressure 482

Posted by CmdrTaco from the ioc-is-not-very-nice dept.
RevWaldo writes "The International Olympic Committee filed a copyright infringement claim yesterday against YouTube for hosting video of a Free Tibet protest at the Chinese Consulate in Manhattan Thursday night. The video depicts demonstrators conducting a candlelight vigil and projecting a protest video onto the consulate building; the projection features recent footage of Tibetan monks being arrested and riffs on the Olympic logo of the five interlocking rings, turning them into handcuffs. YouTube dutifully yanked the video, but it can still be seen on Vimeo. (Be advised; there is some brief footage of bloody, injured monks.)"
It's funny. Laugh.

BSOD Makes Appearance at Olympic Opening Ceremonies 521

Posted by CmdrTaco from the beacuse-its-august dept.
Whiteox writes "A BSOD was projected onto the roof of the National Stadium during the grand finale to the four-hour spectacular at the Olympics. Lenovo chairman Yang Yuanqing chose to go with XP instead of Vista because of the complexity of the IT functions at the Games. His comment on Vista? 'If it's not stable, it could have some problems,' he said. Evidently Bill Gates attended the opening ceremony, so he must have witnessed it."
Bug

Massive VMware Bug Shuts Systems Down 410

Posted by CmdrTaco from the at-least-it-only-shut-down-the-virtual-ones dept.
mattmarlowe writes "Imagine if Red Hat released a version of Linux, and after it was deployed, customers noticed that any processes with a start date of today would refuse to run? Well, that's what happened to VMware — a company that wants nearly all server applications running in virtual machines within a matter of years." Supposedly a fix will be available ... in 36 hours.
Supercomputing

Simple Mod Turns Diodes Into Photon Counters 118

Posted by timothy from the measure-once-vote-often dept.
KentuckyFC writes "The standard way to detect single photons is to use an avalanche photodiode in which a single photon can trigger an avalanche of current. These devices have an important drawback, however. They cannot distinguish the arrival of a single photon from the simultaneous arrival of two or more. But a team of physicists in the UK has found a simple mod that turns avalanche photodiodes into photon counters. They say that in the first instants after the avalanche forms, its current is proportional to the number of photons that have struck. All you have to do is measure it at this early stage. That's like turning a Fiat 500 into a Ferrari. Photon counting is one of the enabling technologies behind optical quantum computing. A number of schemes are known in which it is necessary to count the arrival of 0, 1 or 2 photons at specific detectors (abstract). With such a cheap detector now available (as well as decent photon guns), we could see dramatic progress in this field in the coming months."
Media

Your Mashup Is Probably Legal 149

Posted by timothy from the oh-thank-you-2-live-crew-thank-you dept.
TV Barn writes "We've been conditioned to think that if you pull something off the web and use it, you're committing some sort of copyright infringement. But increasingly, the law is moving in the opposite direction. Provided you are making a truly new use of the content, you are free to make money off those copyrighted images and video and sound. On Monday the Center for Social Media released 'Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Online Video,' which reflects the latest changes in copyright law that has expanded the understanding of fair use to include 'transformational effect.' Already Miro has endorsed the guidelines, as have several public broadcasters. The Center has a good track record, having issued guidelines for documentary filmmakers that have greatly reduced copyright claims in that area. The website has plenty of resources for mashers and mixers; I interviewed the Center's director in this podcast that summarizes the most important findings of the report." On the other hand, says reader kaliphonia, your guitar tablature sites may not fare so well.
Encryption

TrueCrypt 6.0 Released 448

Posted by kdawson from the plausible-deniability dept.
ruphus13 writes "While most of the US was celebrating Independence Day, the true fellow geeks over at TrueCrypt released version 6.0 of TrueCrypt over the long weekend. The new version touts two major upgrades. 'First, TrueCrypt now performs parallel encryption and decryption operations on multi-core systems, giving you a phenomenal speedup if you have more than one processor available. Second, it now has the ability to hide an entire operating system, so even if you're forced to reveal your pre-boot password to an adversary, you can give them one that boots into a plausible decoy operating system, with your hidden operating system remaining completely undetectable.' The software has been released under the 'TrueCrypt License,' which is not OSI approved."
The Courts

User Charged With Felony For Using Fake Name On MySpace 931

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the understand-before-you-prosecute dept.
Recently a user, Lori Drew, was charged with a felony for the heinous crime of pretending to be someone else on the Internet. Using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Lori was charged for signing up for MySpace using a fake name. "The access to MySpace was unauthorized because using a fake name violated the terms of service. The information from a "protected computer" was the profiles of other MySpace users. If this is found to be a valid interpretation of the law, it's really quite frightening. If you violate the Terms of Service of a website, you can be charged with hacking. That's an astounding concept. Does this mean that everyone who uses Bugmenot could be prosecuted? Also, this isn't a minor crime, it's a felony punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment per count. In Drew's case she was charged with three counts for accessing MySpace on three different occasions."
Security

Indiana Data Theft Compromises 700,000 52

Posted by timothy from the can't-the-thieves-just-trade-among-themselves dept.
palewook writes "A Midwest collection company, Central Collection Bureau, admits a server and eight PCs stolen contain over 700,000 individuals' personal data. Central Collection Bureau acts as a collection contractor for doctors and utility companies. The Indiana based company admits the stolen info consists of addresses, social security numbers, and medical codes."

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