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Submission + - The School webcam spying gets weirder (tomshardware.com) 2

Submitted by
markass530
markass530 writes: "It seems that the Lower Merion schools aren't the only one with the spying capabilities that were apparently used in the current class action lawsuit. A reader of Boing Boing pointed out that PBS aired a documentary a few weeks ago called "Digital Nation." In it, vice-principle of Intermediate School 339, Bronx, NY, Dan Ackerman showed how he's able to remotely monitor students through webcam.

Ackerman demonstrates the webcam spying ability: "They don't even realize we are watching," "I always like to mess with them and take a picture," and "9 times out of 10, THEY DUCK OUT OF THE WAY."

Oddly there are no questions regarding student privacy, which is likely how the recent class action lawsuit came about.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learning/schools/how-google-saved-a-school.html?play

Skip to around 4:36 to see the remote webcam monitoring."

Submission + - Appeals Court Knocks Out "Innocent Infringement" (blogspot.com)

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: A 3-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has ruled that a Texas teenager was not entitled to invoke the innocent infringement defense in an RIAA filesharing case where she had admittedly made unauthorized downloads of all of the 16 song files in question, and had not disputed that she had 'access' to the CD versions of the songs which bore copyright notices. The 11 page decision (PDF) handed down in Maverick Recording v. Harper seems to equate 'access' with the mere fact that CD's on sale in stores had copyright notices, and that she was free to go to such stores. In my opinion, however, that is not the type of access contemplated in the statute, as the reference to 'access' in the statute was intended to obviate the 'innocence' defense where the copy reproduced bore a copyright notice. The court also held that the 'making available' issue was irrelevant to the appeal, and that the constitutional argument as to excessiveness of damages had not been preserved for appeal.

Comment Re:They Mentioned treasure hunt on the list (Score 2, Funny) 470

by dptalia (#31067178) Attached to: What Are the Best Valentine's Day Stunts?

This was my goal for every Valentines day. Don't worry about what she thinks, think about the story she will tell.

On February 13th, around 11:30 at night back in my college days, I got 3 rolls of ribbon and tied a bow around as many trees as I could between her dorm and her classes. I put a note under her door saying "Every time you see a bow, remember how much I love you". Cheesy, I know. But, she was the talk of the college campus. Word got around that I tied the bows for her, and she felt like the most popular girl in school. That made her feel like a million bucks. Total cost? $15.

It may be cheesy but it made this girl go "aaawwww". AND read it to her husband! (hint hint)
Microsoft

Hackers Counter Microsoft COFEE With Some DECAF 154

Posted by kdawson from the please-mister-moto dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Two developers have created 'Detect and Eliminate Computer Assisted Forensics' (DECAF). The tool tries to stop Microsoft's Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE), which helps law enforcement officials grab data from password-protected or encrypted sources. After COFEE was leaked to the Web, Microsoft issued takedown notices to sites hosting the software." The article notes that DECAF is not open source, so you aren't really going to know for sure what it will do to your computer.
Cellphones

Submission + - An Experiment in BlackBerry Development

Submitted by ballwall
ballwall writes: We've all read the stories about how lucrative selling apps on the iPhone can be (or not), but what about other platforms? BlackBerry accounts for twice as many handsets shipped as Apple, according to Gartner, so I decided to find out. I wrote about my experiences developing my first application including sales, platform issues, and anything else I thought new mobile developers might be interested in.
Education

Submission + - HCL CEO Says Most American Tech Grads Unemployable 1

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "When questioned about his firm's U.S. hiring, Information Week reports that Vineet Nayar, the CEO of outsourcing giant HCL Technologies, showed he can stereotype with the best of them, telling a NYC audience that most American tech grads are "unemployable". Explaining that Americans are far less willing than students from developing economies like India, China, and Brazil to master the "boring" details of tech process and methodology, the HCL chief added that most Americans are just too expensive to train. HCL, which was reportedly awarded a secretive $170 million outsourcing contract by Microsoft last April, gets a personal thumbs-up for "walking-the-extra-mile" from Steve Ballmer, who BTW was busy last week pitching more H-1B visas as the cure for America's job ills at The National Summit."
Democrats

Submission + - "Obama in Cyberspace" (ft.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: James Boyle has a column http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/350fc16a-5bef-11de-aea3-00144feabdc0.html in the Financial Times about the Obama Administration's policy choices about intellectual property and high technology. (Ungated version is here http://www.thepublicdomain.org/2009/06/18/obama-in-cyberspace/ )
"Traditionally, Democratic administrations take their copyright policy direct from Hollywood and the recording industry. Unfortunately, so do Republican administrations. The capture of regulators by the industry they regulate is nothing new, of course, but in intellectual property there is the added benefit that incumbents can frequently squelch competing technologies and business methods before they ever come into existence. ..SNIP.. The Obama administration's warm embrace of Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley's chequebook, had given some hope that this pattern would change — and I think it will. Now, instead of taking copyright policy direct from the media conglomerates (who, after all, have a very legitimate point of view — even if not the only point of view) it is quite likely that the administration will construct it as a contract between content companies and high-technology companies such as Google. In some places, citizens and consumers will probably benefit, simply because optimising for the interests of two economic blocs rather than one is likely to give us a slightly more balanced, and less technology-phobic, set of rules. And perhaps the administration will go further. But recent actions make me doubt that this is the case."
Government

Submission + - British think-tank relases Iran vote analysis 1

Submitted by
spacefiddle
spacefiddle writes: "Chatham House has released a PDF that provides a statistical analysis of the 2009 vote, comparing it to previous elections. The Guardian's live blog of events in Iran (2.16pm entry) provides a link as well, and highlights some of the key points, including minor details such as more voter turnout than voters in two provinces.

Being a statistical analysis, the paper does not conclude whether the election was legitimate or not, but the numbers provided seem to indicate "not bloody likely.""
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Time for computer aided telepathy

Submitted by dptalia
dptalia writes: What's the biggest problem with military communication? Well the whole talking part, of course! Which is why DARPA is looking into computer aided telepathy. The idea is that speech sets off certain neurons and if a computer can read the neurons it could send the message without actual speech being involved....
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Paying With Cash Could Soon be Back (wsj.com)

Submitted by
gollum123
gollum123 writes: "Retailers could get more aggressive about levying higher prices on customers using credit cards under a measure being considered in the U.S. Senate. ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124225813836317307.html ) As part of a sweeping bill to change the rules for credit cards, a pair of senators are pushing to lift constraints that Visa, MasterCard and other credit card networks impose on merchants' ability to offer discounts for paying by cash or check. Retailers have long chafed under the restrictions, which make it burdensome for them to make transparent to consumers the fees they pay to credit card companies. Those fees amount to tens of billions of dollars a year. The result, they complain, is that cash-paying customers unfairly end up sharing the cost of letting other customers buy on credit. The legislation would allow discounts for debit cards and ban retaliation against retailers who charge less for transactions that don't involve credit cards."

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