bobstay - Slashdot User

Canada Supreme Court Broadens Internet "Luring" Offense 596

Posted by timothy on Monday December 07, 2009 @09:13AM from the should-get-together-with-the-cctv-folks dept.

An anonymous reader points out this report that a Canadian Supreme Court has broadened its interpretation of an existing law designed to punish adults who attempt to meet children online for criminal purposes; under the court's interpretation, says the article, that would now "include anyone having an inappropriate conversation with a child — even if the chats aren't sexual in nature and the accused never intended to meet the alleged victim." The story quotes Mark Hecht, of the organization Beyond Borders, thus: "If you're an adult and if you're having conversations with a child on the Internet, be warned because even if your conversations aren't sexual and even if your conversations are not for the purpose of meeting a child and committing an offence against a child, what you're doing is potentially a crime."

Submission + - OpenXML to/from ODF Translator Available

Submitted by

WED Fan

on Friday March 02, 2007 @11:08AM

WED Fan writes: "A translator that can be plugged into Microsoft Office and competitors to translate ODF to OpenXML or OpenXML to ODF is now freely available, under BSD licensing.

The completed Open XML Translator enables conversion of documents from one format to the other and is available for anyone to download and use at no cost. When plugged into Microsoft® Office Word, for example, the Translator provides customers with the choice to open and save documents in ODF rather than the native Open XML format. The Translator may also be plugged into competing word processing programs that use ODF...

Now, you can use either format and maintain your own choice of word processor. Coolness."

Submission + - Scotland Building Wave Power Farms

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Friday March 02, 2007 @10:00AM

eldavojohn writes: "Scottish engineers are taking advantage of the huge ocean coast that Scotland enjoys by building a 'wave farm' to harvest electricity from the ocean's powerful waves. These big red tubes have been named the Pelamis System after a sea snake. From the article, '"A bit like a ship at anchor or a flag on a flagpole, it self orientates into the waves," said Mr Carcas. "Waves then travel down the length of the machine and in doing so each of the sections, each of these train carriages, moves up and down and side to side." These snake-like movements push hydraulic fluid through generators to produce electricity. '"

Submission + - Rising STD Rates Sparks Online Dating

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Friday March 02, 2007 @09:51AM

eldavojohn writes: "From CNN, there's an article on infected people seeking other infected people to date. Online, people are finding sites dedicated to helping STD infected people find partners with the same STD (MPWH.com, stdwatch.net, Charlotteh.com). From the article, "Once John joined Charlotteh.com — part support group, part dating site for people with herpes — everything changed. "I would have been happy to have had just one person to unload everything I was feeling," he says. "Instead I found more than 500.""

Submission + - Vista activation cracked by brute force

Submitted by Bengt on Friday March 02, 2007 @05:27AM

Bengt writes: The Inquirer has a story about a brute force Vista key activation crack.

From TFA: The crack is a glorified guesser, and with the speed of modern PCs and the number of outstanding keys, the 25-digit serials are within range. The biggest problem for MS? If this gets widespread, and I hope it will, people will start activating legit keys that are owned by other people.

There is really no differentiating between a legit copy with a manually typed in wrong key and a hack attempt. Sure MS can throttle this by limiting key attempts to one a minute or so on new software, but the older variants are already burnt to disk. The cat is out of the bag. The crack was first mentioned on the Keznews forums, a step by step How-to can be found HERE

Submission + - Falling into the Vista trap

Submitted by laejoh on Friday March 02, 2007 @05:23AM

laejoh writes: BBC business editor tries out Vista and asks himself: So would I do it again?

The answer is no. Do what I originally had planned to do. Wait for half a year until the driver issues are settled and then buy a new PC.

You will probably enjoy Vista, but there's little reason to do it the hard way.

Submission + - "Illegal Image" Database Proposed

Submitted by bky1701 on Friday March 02, 2007 @04:57AM

bky1701 writes: Cnet reports on a proposal from senator John McCain to create a database of alleged illegal images that would be used to automatically report users to the police. The full proposal is available here in PDF.

If passed, this could have clear ramifications on privacy and artistic freedom.

Submission + - How to build a video wall

Submitted by alphakappa on Friday March 02, 2007 @03:36AM

alphakappa writes: I am interested in building a video wall as a personal project using recycled old laptops so that I can make use of the display controllers already present. Is there free or cheap software that can extend the display on Windows and still be capable of showing different videos on different zones (like, say run a video in one zone while showing a powerpoint presentation in another one) What tools would slashdotters use?

Submission + - Google employee perks versus state prison perks

Submitted by

Wee

on Friday March 02, 2007 @02:19AM

Wee writes: "Google recently topped Fortune's list of "100 Best Companies to Work For" partly due to its huge set of employee perks. But who really has the best perks: Google or your local state prison?

Mike Nicholson wrote a cleverly humorous article on Google employee perks compared to the stuff that prisoners are entitled to. The verdict? If you're really after perks, you should commit a major crime rather than work for Google."

Submission + - Hello World Running on Retail Xbox360 Consoles

Submitted by NiteStar on Friday March 02, 2007 @02:03AM

NiteStar writes: A hacker named Crawler360 released what looks like the first "Hello, world!" homebrew program that you can run on a retail Xbox360 using the Xbox360 Hypervisor Vulnerability released Tuesday. To perform that hack you will need the King Kong game (for the shader exploit), a modified DVD firmware or peform a disc-swap-trick, connect the serial port on your Xbox360, compile the code from sources yourself and you'll need an Xbox360 with kernel 4532 or 4548 (it won't work on the new 4552 kernel).

Submission + - Activating other's people Vistas.

Submitted by

derrida

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @06:27PM

derrida writes: "TheInquirer reports that according to a an active thread at the KezNews forum (activation needed) it just needs a simple brute force attack to crack Vista activation. As TheInquirer points out if this gets widespread, people will start activating legit keys that are owned by other people. It won't take long for boxes bought at retail to be activated before they are bought, and the people who plunk down money for the mal^h^h^hsoftware for real get 'you are a filthy pirate' messages."

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