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The Military

Submission + - Marines Closer to Next-generation Rifle (military.com)

Submitted by ixidor
ixidor writes: The Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Va., announced contract awards for three competing weapons manufacturers to produce and deliver their final entries to the Corps by the middle of next year, in what signifies a final round of competition that began with ten candidates. http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,181898,00.html?ESRC=marine-a.nl
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Retrial for MN woman in music piracy case (twincities.com)

Submitted by girlintraining
girlintraining writes: Several months ago RIAA won a major victory against a Minnesota woman accused of pirating 24 songs. A jury awarded the recording industry $220,000 at the time. A federal judge threw out the jury award. The appeal by RIAA has failed, which sets the stage for a re-trial.
The Courts

Submission + - Chinese slaps pirates with harsh prison sentence

Submitted by HASUS
HASUS writes: The alleged ringleaders of a Chinese counterfeiting gang that sold at least $2 billion worth of bogus Microsoft Corp. software were sentenced Wednesday to prison terms of up to 6 1/2 years, in what is believed to be the harshest penalties yet under China's tightened piracy laws. Research commissioned by the Business Software Alliance, an industry trade group, found that 82 percent of the software used in China in 2007 was not legitimately purchased, more than double the worldwide piracy rate of 38 percent.
Earth

Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow? 877

Posted by timothy from the four-horsemen-dressage dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, Yellowstone National Park has been having a very unusual number of earthquakes. Many of the most recent tremors have been deeper underground, an ominous sign. Combine that with a rapid rise in elevation over the past three years, and the possibility that earthquake activity from surrounding areas could trigger such an eruption on its own, and you've got the possible warning signs of a supervolcano eruption that would wipe out half to 2/3 of the continental US, plunge global temperatures, and wipe out a very significant chunk of world food sources. Here's a little more info to make your New Year brighter!"

Comment Re:Massachusetts long arm (Score 1) 155

by Clugy (#25416591) Attached to: New State Laws Could Make Encryption Widespread
As a preface to my comment, IANAL. If you look at how states collect sales taxes from online sales, they can only "force" online companies that have a physical presence in their state to charge sales tax to residents of that state -- if the online business is outside the state, the most the state can do is require anyone who makes an online purchase to be a good citizen and report it to the revenue service and pay taxes on it. I think Massachusetts will run into the same situation, they will be able to enforce the laws on businesses that have a "presence" in Massachusetts but any business that does not have a presence will probably be exempt or could make a very strong legal case to be made exempt since they are not physically located in any way, shape, or form in Massachusetts.
Encryption

New State Laws Could Make Encryption Widespread 155

Posted by kdawson from the squeamish-ossifrages dept.
New laws that took effect in Nevada on Oct. 1 and will kick in on Jan. 1 in Massachusetts may effectively mandate encryption for companies' hard drives, portable devices, and data transmissions. The laws will be binding on any organization that maintains personal information about residents of the two states. (Washington and Michigan are considering similar legislation.) Nevada's law deals mostly with transmitted information and Massachusetts's emphasizes stored information. Between them the two laws should put more of a dent into lax security practices than widespread laws requiring customer notification of data breaches have done. (Such laws are on the books in 40 states and by one estimate have reduced identity theft by 2%.) Here are a couple of legal takes on the impact of the new laws.
Security

FBI Says Dark Market Sting Netted 56 Arrests 130

Posted by timothy from the precise-number-on-those-prevented-thefts-fellas dept.
narramissic writes "A two-year undercover FBI sting operation targeting online 'carder' forums hosted on the DarkMarket.ws Web site has netted 56 arrests and prevented about $70 million in fraud losses, the FBI said Thursday. DarkMarket.ws was widely used by online scammers to buy and sell stolen credit card numbers, other financial information, and even the devices used to make fake banking cards. Before it was shut down earlier this month, the Web site had registered more than 2,500 members. Although Dark Market was thought to have been administered by a criminal going by the name Master Splyntr, German Public Radio reported on Monday that the FBI had been running a sting operation on the site since late 2006, and that Master Splyntr was actually an FBI agent named J. Keith Mularski." Of course, they say it in German; non-German speakers may want to consult the Babelfish.
Security

FBI Warns of Sweeping Global Threat To US Cybersecurity 134

Posted by CmdrTaco from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
GovIT Geek writes "The FBI's newly appointed chief of cyber security warned today that 'a couple dozen' countries are eager to hack US government, corporate, and military networks. While he refused to provide country-specific details, FBI Cyber Division Chief Shawn Henry told reporters at a roundtable that cooperation with foreign law enforcement is one of the Bureau's highest priorities and added the United States has had incredible success fostering overseas partnerships."
Privacy

ISP Embarq Monitors User Traffic 106

Posted by Soulskill from the you-can-trust-us dept.
Deli Korkmaz writes "The Washington Post reports that Sprint-Nextel spin-off Embarq, currently the US's fourth largest DSL provider, monitored Internet activity on some 26,000 customers in Kansas using deep-packet inspection technology NebuAd in order to deliver targeted advertising to users' desktops. CNet provides coverage as well. The House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce is investigating whether any privacy laws were broken. Users were informed of this test and invited to opt out only via Embarq's online Privacy Policy; a mere 15 subscribers did so."
Microsoft

Microsoft Blesses LGPL, Joins Apache Foundation 425

Posted by timothy from the could-be-the-largest-free-software-vendor dept.
Penguinisto writes "According to a somewhat jaw-dropping story in The Register, it appears that Microsoft has performed a trifecta of geek-scaring feats: They have joined the Apache Software Foundation as a Platinum member(at $100K USD a year), submitted LGPL-licensed patches for ADOdb, and have pledged to expand their Open Specifications Promise by adding to the list more than 100 protocols for interoperability between its Windows Server and the Windows client. While I sincerely doubt they'll release Vista under a GPL license anytime soon, this is certainly an unexpected series of moves on their part, and could possibly lead to more OSS (as opposed to 'Shared Source') interactivity between what is arguably Linux' greatest adversary and the Open Source community." (We mentioned the announced support for the Apache Foundation earlier today, as well.)
Math

No Gap Found In Math Abilities of Girls, Boys 701

Posted by kdawson from the anything-you-can-compute dept.
sciencehabit writes "For anyone who still believes that boys are better at math than girls, a massive new study published today in Science shows there's no difference. 'Among students with the highest test scores, the team did find that white boys outnumbered white girls by about two to one. Among Asians, however, that result was nearly reversed. Hyde says that suggests that cultural and social factors, not gender alone, influence how well students perform on tests.' But the researchers do note a disturbing trend towards omitting harder kinds of math questions from standardized tests."
The Courts

Craigslist Forced To Reveal a Seller's Identity 314

Posted by kdawson from the limits-to-anonymity dept.
mi writes "The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts has won a judgment compelling Craigslist to reveal the identity of 'Daniel,' who tried to sell two tickets to the Oscar ceremony recently. The plaintiff's argument against such sales is scary and can be taken very far very quickly: 'If you don't know who's inside the theater, it's very difficult to provide security.' Craigslist's handling of the case may be even scarier, however — instead of fighting tooth-and-nail for the user's privacy, as we expect Google, Yahoo, and AOL, and even credit-card issuers to do, Craigslist simply did not show up in court and lost by default."
Hardware Hacking

Hacked Oyster Card System Crashes Again 95

Posted by kdawson from the no-pearls-in-sight dept.
Barence sends along PcPro coverage of the second crash of London's Oyster card billing system in two weeks. Transport for London was forced to open the gates and allow free travel for all. "There is currently a technical problem with Oyster readers at London Underground stations which is affecting Oyster pay as you go cards only," explains the TfL website. This follows the first crash two weeks ago, which left 65,000 Oyster cards permanently corrupted. Speculation is increasing that the crashes may be related to the hacking of the Oyster card system by Dutch researchers from Radboud University, though TfL denies any link. Plans to publish details of the hack were briefly halted when the makers of the chip used in the system sued the group, although a judge ruled earlier this week that the researchers could go ahead. During the court action, details briefly leaked on website Wikileaks.
Programming

The Father of Multi-Core Chips Talks Shop 90

Posted by timothy from the green-onion-layered-beneath-yogurt dept.
pacopico writes "Stanford professor Kunle Olukotun designed the first mainstream multi-core chip, crafting what would become Sun Microsystems's Niagra product. Now, he's heading up Stanford's Pervasive Parallelism Lab where researchers are looking at 100s of core systems that might power robots, 3-D virtual worlds and insanely big server applications. The Register just interviewed Olukotun about this work and the future of multi-core chips. Weird and interesting stuff."
United States

USAF Counter-Terror Funds Buy "Comfort Capsules" 429

Posted by Soulskill from the let's-buy-toys dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post reports, 'The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world ... Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.' Congress told the USAF twice that they could not spend the money on this frivolous project, but they did it anyway."

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