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Comment Re:Defined by their employer... (Score 1) 346

We don't know if the software was unauthorized, unless we see the terms and conditions under which the child/parent received the laptop. Anything with a barely modern web browser is constantly running javascript programs, and the vast majority of folks have no idea it's running on their machines, much less knowingly authorizing it.

Comment Re:I'm still trying to wrap my brain around... (Score 2) 346

The Northern Mariana Islands are a top ten candidate for the farthest habitable point from everywhere else in the world. I'm surprised there was more than one FBI agent on the island, and it's a good bet any one of the top quartile of slashdot's readership would instantly be the most computer literate person on the island were they to move there. Hanlon's razor is particularly applicable here.

Comment Lords of the Starship (Score 1) 1365

by Thyrsus (#40914357) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What's the Most Depressing Sci-fi You've Ever Read?
Mark Geston,criticizing technology worship. The cover blurb:

"The ship was to be seven miles long, a third of a mile in diameter and have a wing-spread of three and a half miles. It would take two and a half centuries to construct. Its announced purpose: to carry humanity away from its ruined world, from the world that had become a perpetual purgatory.

To build this vast ship would require the undivided activity of an entire nation and would mean carrying out a ruthless program of war and conquest, of annihilation and reconstruction, and of education and rediscovery.

But was this starship really what it was claimed to be? Or was there a greater secret behind its incredible cost -- a secret so strange that no man dared reveal it?"

Submission + - 16th-Century Map May Provide New Clues About The Fate Of The Roanoke Colony (nytimes.com)

Submitted by JoeRobe
JoeRobe writes: Roanoke Colony (on the coast of North Carolina) disappeared sometime between 1587 and 1590, with the only clue to its fate being the word "Croatoan" carved into a wooden post. Now, as if straight out of an Indiana Jones script, new clues to the whereabouts of the lost colony may have been discovered on a 16th-century map. The British Museum has re-examined the watercolor map to find a hidden symbol under a patch, in the shape of a 4-pointed star. The star likely indicates the location of an existing or intended fort that the settlers may have retreated to after abandoning the colony. Adding to the mystery, the patch overlaying the star may have been added in order to hide it from the "spy-riddled English court."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - True Tech Confessions (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Recursive deletes, deep-sixing servers, bugs that become rewarding features — InfoWorld's Dan Tynan serves up seven true tech confessions by IT pros. 'You might have deleted the entire contents of a server by accident or wiped out three months' worth of government agency data without a reliable backup on hand. You may have pulled a youthful prank that cut off Net access for thousands of your employer's customers. You could have deliberately shared your log-ons with everyone else in the company in order to make a point or unplugged network servers willy-nilly, just to see what would happen,' Tynan writes. 'Some names have been changed to protect the guilty. Don't laugh. One day, you may find yourself in eerily similar circumstances.'"

Submission + - Eolas 906 Patent struck by Tyler, Texas jury (cnet.com)

Submitted by ackthpt
ackthpt writes: "All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing" — Edmund Burke. Sir Tim Berners-Lee did something — he traveled to the courtroom in East Texas to give his testimony on how, if upheld, the Eolas Technologies & University of California patent on Web Interactivity if upheld could prove to be a major threat to the Internet as it's known today. The Jury deliberated only a few hours before invalidating the patent in question. In a victory Tweet Berners-Lee said, "Texas jury agreed Eolas 906 patent invalid. Good thing too!" Google, Amazon, Apple, Adobe and a host of other companies, with representatives present, must have given a Texas-size sigh of relief.
Data Storage

Submission + - Intel Releases Cherryville SSD - 80,000 IOPS (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Intel today began shipping its fastest SSD to date and the first one to a SandForce controller — the SF2281. The spec sheet for the Cherryville 520 Series 2.5-in SSD shows sequential read/write speeds of 500MB+ per second and random read rates exceeding 80,000 IOPS. Actual testing on a MacBook Pro showed significantly lower performance, but it's still a drive that can offer 15-second system boots and application loads that seem instantaneous. Intel has also for the first time added a 5-year warranty on its SSD.

Submission + - ACTA Ratification Suspended by Czech Republic (google.com)

Submitted by tykev
tykev writes: The Czech government suspended the ratification process of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, ACTA, said Prime Minister Petr Necas today. The government wants to further analyze the issue. There were a number of public demonstrations against ACTA in several Czech towns, and some Czech Euro MP's oppose ACTA as being ‘completely wide of the mark’. Earlier, Poland announced its intention to suspend the ratification process as well. In the meantime, the website of the ruling Czech Civic Democratic Party was attacked and defaced by Anonymous who also publicly released personal data of the party's members.
Network

Submission + - Boffins embed electronic components into optical fibres (techworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists at the Universities of Southampton and Penn State have found a way to embed electronic components into optical fibres, in a breakthrough that could lead to the creation of super high-speed telecommunications networks.

Rather than trying to merge flat chips with round optical fibres, the team of scientists used high-pressure chemistry techniques to deposit semiconducting materials layer by layer directly into tiny holes in optical fibres. This bypasses the need to integrate fibre-optics onto a chip, and means that the data signal never has to leave the fibre.
Facebook

Submission + - Moglen: Facebook Is A Man-In-The-Middle Attack (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "In an email exchange with privacy blogger Dan Tynan, Columbia law professor Eben Moglen referred to Facebook as a "man in the middle attack" — that is, a service that intercepts communication between two parties and uses it for its own nefarious purposes. Tynan is a critic of Facebook, but he thinks Moglen is overstating the case."

Comment Re:you prefer psychological abuse (Score 1) 182

by Thyrsus (#38866129) Attached to: Gates Paying Murdoch For System To Track U.S. Kids' School Progress

"There is absolutely nothing wrong with swatting a kid on the behind if he/she refuses to behave." That statement has been falsified by the epidemiologic evidence (it obviously being unethical to have an un-spanked control group and a spanked test group). Children subject to physical discipline are more likely to be charged with crimes once they mature. Unfortunately, I can't find an un-paywalled citation.

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