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GUI

Wiimote Turns TV into Touchless MS Surface 104

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-thats-what-i'm-talking-about dept.
RemyBR writes "User interface project allows you to control objects on a display using gestures, working like Microsoft's Surface but without touching the screen at all. Inspired by Johnny Chung Lee's work, the system requires you to wear Minority Report-style gloves equipped with infrared emitters on your fingertips. A Wiimote on top of the display keeps track of these IR LEDs, while the software can read the motion down to two-finger pinching gestures for image zooming."
The Internet

Submission + - e-culture, slashdotism, futurism, blogofascism (salon.com)

Submitted by
hyperball
hyperball writes: "Siegel gives a dissatisfied account of the new "e-society" as it emerges from the pre-2k society to whatever we are building for this century. The Salon account[Louis Bayard] convincingly stays away from Siegel's critique with regards to the likes of Gawker and YouTube... when he writes that "the Internet is possibly the most radical transformation of private and public life in the history of humankind,"... Knowledge is "devalued into information." ... [Our interior lives are being] "packaged like merchandise," and "the sources of critical detachment are drying up, as book supplements disappear from newspapers and what passes for critical thinking in the more intellectually lively magazines gives way to the Internet's emphasis on cuteness, novelty, buzz, and pursuit of the 'viral." So two things: technology is changing society/human relationships, is it for better or for worse? and, should'nt ./ be concerned not only with the latest technological advancements, but with the forecasting and construction of "the future"'s ideas? I mean, why do i read this in Salon, when ./ readers should be able to be main contributors to this discourse."
The Internet

Submission + - Geist's Fair Copyright for Canada Principles

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Canadian law prof Michael Geist has been leading the charge against a Canadian DMCA including the creation a Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group that now has more than 38,000 members. Having delayed the legislation, he now outlines what Canadians should be fighting for — more flexible fair dealing, a balanced implementation of the WIPO Internet treaties, an ISP safe harbour, and a modernized backup copy provision.
Privacy

Submission + - Bill Proposes Database of Offenders to Aid Dating (sacbee.com)

Submitted by globaljustin
globaljustin writes: A California state bill would create an online database open to the public of men and women convicted of domestic violence in California.

"If you're online, Googling and looking for information on someone you met in a bar or on MySpace, this would provide a tool for people to go and look to see if someone who is suspicious and a little creepy has a history of violence," said Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, who introduced the bill.

Also reported by the New York Times and GCN
The Courts

Submission + - Type host -l, pay $50,000+ and perhaps go to jail (spamsuite.com) 1

Submitted by
Joe Wagner
Joe Wagner writes: "In a written judgment that has only become public today, anti-spammer David Ritz has lost the SLAPP lawsuit filed by Jerry Reynolds filed for running "unauthorized" DNS lookups on their servers. Knowing "commands are not commonly known to the average computer user" can get you into serious peril in some judges' court rooms.

I kid you not. The Judge ruled that "In all intended uses of a zone transfer, the secondary server is operated by the same party that operates the primary server." The original complaint is here.

Ritz was a thorn in Reynolds' side during the years when Ritz was trying to get the Netzilla/Sexzilla porn spam operation to stop spamming. Reynolds has been quite aggressive in trying to get his past erased from the net (including forged cancel posts). The North Dakota Judge also awarded attorneys fee which could theoretically make the total bill over $500k for doing a domain zone transfer. Reynolds also filed a criminal complaint against Ritz which was on hold pending resolution of this trial.

Here is a literal worst-case scenario of what can happen when a court fails miserably to understand technology. The judge ruled:

Ritz has engaged in a variety of activities without authorization on the Internet. Those activities include port scanning, hijacking computers, and the compilation and publication of Whois lookups without authorization from Network Solutions.
The port scanning/hijacking computers is posting a test message through one of Verizon's machines to prove to Verizon they had an open relay — i.e. posting to 0.verizon.security via the relay a note to Verizon's security saying "What's it going to take to get you to secure this gaping hole in what you call your network," or words to that effect. Verizon apparently had no problem with the demo post and closed the relay.

Take note, for those anti-spammers out there, this Judge is ruling that if you post the whois record for a spammer's domain your are doing a malicious, tortious act.

There is a legal defense fund that was set up for his case. I believe he does not have the resources to appeal and this would be a very bad precedent to stand."
Censorship

Submission + - Ford Claims Ownership Of Your Pictures (bmcforums.com)

Submitted by
Mike Rogers
Mike Rogers writes: "In a move that can only be described as "Copyright Insanity", Form Motor Company now claims that they hold the rights to ANY image of a Ford vehicle, even if it's a picture you took of your own car. The Black Mustang Club wanted to put together a calendar featuring member's cars and print it through CafePress, but an attorney from Ford nixed the project, stating that the calendar pics and "anything with one of (member's) cars in it infringes on Ford's trademarks which include the use of images of THEIR vehicles." Does Ford have the right to prevent you from printing images of a car you own?"
Security

Submission + - Facebook: Worse Than Big Brother? (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
behe101
behe101 writes: "Tom Hodgkinson in today's Guardian has analysed the people behind Facebook and their terrible privacy policy in a scathing attack on the website. "I despise Facebook. This enormously successful American business describes itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you". But hang on. Why on God's earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California? What was wrong with the pub?""
Security

Submission + - City techie sues Cell Company Airtel & Pune Po (indiatimes.com)

Submitted by TechGuyFromIndia
TechGuyFromIndia writes: A Bangalore-based software engineer, Lakshmana Kailash K, who was wrongly jailed for 50 days last year by the Pune police cyber cell, has demanded Rs 20 crore in damages and slapped a legal notice on telecom giant Bharti Airtel, principal secretary (Home) Maharashtra government and assistant commissioner of police (financial & cyber crime unit), Pune police. Lakshmana had been falsely accused of an internet crime — posting unseemly pictures of Chattrapati Shivaji on the web — and was arrested based on the internet protocol address provided by his internet service provider, Bharti. As it turned out, the IP address was not his. But by the time the police confirmed this and acted on it, he had already spent 50 harrowing days at the Yerwada Jail with hardened criminals, had tasted lathi beatings and was made to use one bowl to both eat and for the toilet. Lakshmana's nightmare, first reported in TOI on Nov 3, 2007, sparked condemnation on the web with internet communities posting their outrage. The techie's 10-page legal notice, a copy of which has been sent to the NHRC, vents anger at the way in which the police and judicial system made nonsense of his rights and highlights the degrading conditions within the jail.
The Internet

Submission + - Net Neutrality Summit

Submitted by Castar
Castar writes: BoingBoing has a post about an upcoming summit in San Francisco about the issue of Net Neutrality. The EFF and speakers on both sides of the issue are gathering to debate and spread awareness of Network Neutrality, which is an increasingly important topic. The FCC, of course, might have the final word.
Television

Submission + - Television Censorship in Kazakhstan?

Submitted by
zhennian
zhennian writes: "I recently had the pleasure of spending 3 months in the post-soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. We were in a rented apartment which had 'cable TV' according to the owner. I thought it interesting that Fox/BBC/CNN were absent when I did a manual scan on the LG television across the VHF/UHF bands. A few weeks before we left, I went and purchased a USB Analogue TV tuner and was surprised to find CNN/BBC/StarWorld/Movies and a number of other English speaking channels with good(?) world news and western style movies and sitcoms. Could this be a relic of communist control that still resides in the TV manufacturing process, or maybe it is actively continued by the fairly authoritarian government. I can only guess that the tuner in the LG television was a 'special' one which was blinded to the questionable channels. Anyone come across this in post soviet countries? The TV could pick up channels either side of the missing ones, so it wasn't a natural limitation of the tuner."
Music

Submission + - Pandora UK To Be Taken Down (pandora.com) 1

Submitted by thetartanavenger
thetartanavenger writes: In what is another foot in the grave for the music industry, pandora.com will shortly be forced to be taken offline in the UK.

In July Pandora was forced to close it doors to the rest of the world, however it clung to that little piece of hope that they would be able to keep it running for the UK. However, despite long attempts to work out an affordable deal with the record companies, Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, has sent out this email to all of it's UK listeners. Just how long is it going to be until this will happen to those of you in the states too?

RIP Pandora UK. You will be missed.
Privacy

Submission + - If Your Hard Drive Could Testify ...

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A couple of years ago, Michael T. Arnold landed at the Los Angeles International Airport after a 20-hour flight from the Philippines. He had his laptop with him, and a customs officer took a look at what was on his hard drive. Clicking on folders called "Kodak pictures" and "Kodak memories," the officer found child pornography. The search was not unusual: the government contends that it is perfectly free to inspect every laptop that enters the country, whether or not there is anything suspicious about the computer or its owner. Rummaging through a computer's hard drive, the government says, is no different than looking through a suitcase. One federal appeals court has agreed, and a second seems ready to follow suit. There is one lonely voice on the other side. In 2006, Judge Dean D. Pregerson of Federal District Court in Los Angeles suppressed the evidence against Mr. Arnold. "Electronic storage devices function as an extension of our own memory," Judge Pregerson wrote, in explaining why the government should not be allowed to inspect them without cause. "They are capable of storing our thoughts, ranging from the most whimsical to the most profound." Computer hard drives can include, Judge Pregerson continued, diaries, letters, medical information, financial records, trade secrets, attorney-client materials and — the clincher, of course — information about reporters' "confidential sources and story leads." But Judge Pregerson's decision seems to be headed for reversal. The three judges who heard the arguments in October in the appeal of his decision seemed persuaded that a computer is just a container and deserves no special protection from searches at the border. The same information in hard-copy form, their questions suggested, would doubtless be subject to search. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., took that position in a 2005 decision. It upheld the conviction of John W. Ickes Jr., who crossed the Canadian border with a computer containing child pornography. A customs agent's suspicions were raised, the court's decision said, "after discovering a video camera containing a tape of a tennis match which focused excessively on a young ball boy." It is true that the government should have great leeway in searching physical objects at the border. But the law requires a little more — a "reasonable suspicion" — when the search is especially invasive, as when the human body is involved. Searching a computer, said Jennifer M. Chacón, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, "is fairly intrusive." Like searches of the body, she said, such "an invasive search should require reasonable suspicion." An interesting supporting brief filed in the Arnold case by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said there have to be some limits on the government's ability to acquire information. "Under the government's reasoning," the brief said, "border authorities could systematically collect all of the information contained on every laptop computer, BlackBerry and other electronic device carried across our national borders by every traveler, American or foreign." That is, the brief said, "simply electronic surveillance after the fact." The government went even further in the case of Sebastien Boucher, a Canadian who lives in New Hampshire. Mr. Boucher crossed the Canadian border by car about a year ago, and a customs agent noticed a laptop in the back seat. Asked whether he had child pornography on his laptop, Mr. Boucher said he was not sure. He said he downloaded a lot of pornography but deleted child pornography when he found it. Some of the files on Mr. Boucher's computer were encrypted using a program called Pretty Good Privacy, and Mr. Boucher helped the agent look at them, apparently by entering an encryption code. The agent said he saw lots of revolting pornography involving children. The government seized the laptop. But when it tried to open the encrypted files again, it could not. A grand jury instructed Mr. Boucher to provide the password. But a federal magistrate judge quashed that subpoena in November, saying that requiring Mr. Boucher to provide it would violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Last week, the government appealed. The magistrate judge, Jerome J. Niedermeier of Federal District Court in Burlington, Vt., used an analogy from Supreme Court precedent. It is one thing to require a defendant to surrender a key to a safe and another to make him reveal its combination. The government can make you provide samples of your blood, handwriting and the sound of your voice. It can make you put on a shirt or stand in a lineup. But it cannot make you testify about facts or beliefs that may incriminate you, Judge Niedermeier said. "The core value of the Fifth Amendment is that you can't be made to speak in ways that indicate your guilt," Michael Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Miami, wrote about the Boucher case on his Discourse.net blog. But Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at the George Washington University, said Judge Niedermeier had probably gotten it wrong. "In a normal case," Professor Kerr said in an interview, "there would be a privilege." But given what Mr. Boucher had already done at the border, he said, making him provide the password again would probably not violate the Fifth Amendment. There are all sorts of lessons in these cases. One is that the border seems be a privacy-free zone. A second is that encryption programs work. A third is that you should keep your password to yourself. And the most important, as my wife keeps telling me, is that you should leave your laptop at home. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/us/07bar.html?ei=5090&en=d0caa6c9bacf76ed&ex=1357362000&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1199714806-NZ2agd4Kikkv8hShxGsvKg&pagewanted=print
Government

Submission + - If Your Hard Drive Could Testify... (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
Embedded Geek
Embedded Geek writes: "The New York Times has an underreported story about an expected federal appeals court ruling that will uphold the government's right to search through all electronic media entering the country, just as they have the right to search through suitcases, baggage, etc. The case involves a man returning from the Philippines who was caught with child pornography on his laptop in a folder labeled "Kodak Pictures." Under the standard, officials would not need "reasonable suspicion" as is required for a body search. Instead, "border authorities could systematically collect all of the information contained on every laptop computer, BlackBerry and other electronic device carried across our national borders by every traveler, American or foreign." Interestingly, encryption seems to be the best option to protecting privacy at the border here just as it is elsewhere — as long as you never voluntarily provide the password to Customs, as they can force you to do it again if they forget to write it down."

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