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Science

Submission + - Extinct Mammoth: Coming to a Zoo Near You (telegraph.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Techmeology
Techmeology writes: Professor Akira Iritani of Kyoto University plans to use recent developments in cloning technology to give life to the currently extinct woolly mammoth. Although earlier efforts in the 1990s were unsuccessful due to damage caused by extreme cold, Professor Iritani believes he can use a technique pioneered by Dr Wakayama (who successfully cloned a frozen mouse) to overcome this obstacle. This technique will enable Professor Iritani to identify viable cell nuclei, and transfer them to egg cells of an African elephant which will carry the mammoth for a 600 day pregnancy.
Security

Submission + - Cheap GSM Eavesdropping a Reality (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Techmeology
Techmeology writes: GSM eavesdropping has been demonstrated at the Chaos Computer Club Congress, Berlin using a €10 Motorola phone, and open source GSM firmware. Karsten Nohl and Sylvain Munaut replaced the firmware on the phone, enabling them to process all the data it received. They used already available rainbow tables to decrypt data being sent to and from other mobile phones. They have no plans to release the hack publicly, however they expect others to successfully attempt the hack. Mr Nohl said the objective was to raise awareness of GSM's insecurity.
Facebook

Submission + - Is Facebook about to unveil an e-mail service? (afterdawn.com)

Submitted by Robadob
Robadob writes: Multiple sources are reporting today that Facebook is set to unveil an e-mail service, one that will be instantly available to all 500 million members of the social networking giant.
If every current member signs up for an account, Facebook would leap into the top spot for email providers, surpassing Microsoft, who has 361 million users of Hotmail and Live. Yahoo is in second with 273 million, followed by Google's Gmail at 193 million.

The company has invited the press to a "significant" announcement on Monday, where it will unveil an alelged "Gmail killer."

An analyst with Gartner said this: "There is a huge opportunity for these guys to fundamentally change the nature of e-mail."

The analyst says the Facebook system could likely prioritize emails based on closeness to the sender, or make email exchanges into a conversation between a number of users, turning the "dinosaur" that is email into a social service.
Privacy

Submission + - Launch Date Set For Diaspora (joindiaspora.com) 1

Submitted by Techmeology
Techmeology writes: Diaspora, the open source alternative to social networking sites, has set a release date of 15th September 2010. In their first blog post in nearly two months, the Diaspora team outline the work they have been doing over the past two months. They also assure the Internet community that work will continue on the project past the initial release, describing the release as "the beginning of something great, not a finished summer project". The team explains that their focus has been with the UI and developing software that allows content to be shared easily and appropriately, and that features such as plugins will be developed after the initial release. It will be interesting to see how Diaspora compares to services like Facebook (who knows, there might even be a dislike button), and how much of an impact it will have.

Submission + - UK government tightens up stop and search powers

Submitted by Some Bitch
Some Bitch writes: The European Court of Human Rights ruled the UK police stop and search powers illegal back in January following a 7 year battle by human rights group Liberty, a decision which led the government to appeal and that appeal was rejected a week ago. Today the government changed the rules to require reasonable suspicion of terrist activity before a stop and search can take place. Liberty welcomed the move saying, "To our knowledge, it has never helped catch a single terrorist. This is a very important day for personal privacy, protest rights and race equality in Britain."
Programming

Submission + - 10 Ways Curated App Stores Undermine Developers (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses 10 ways locked-down app store delivery models limit choice for developers — and ultimately hurts users. The model, best known in the form of Apple's notoriously finicky iPhone App Store, has established an entirely new relationship between software vendors and consumers, one some are calling 'curated computing,' a mode in which choice is constrained to deliver more relevant, less complex experiences. This model, deemed essential to the success of tablets, provides questionable value to developers, undermining their interests in a variety of ways. From disproportionate profit cuts, to curator veto powers, to poor security, fragmentation, and hostility to free software, developers must sacrifice a lot to 'curated computing' to get their wares into the hands of end-users."
Government

Submission + - Major ISPs Challenge UK's Digital Economy Act (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Techmeology
Techmeology writes: TalkTalk and BT, two of the UK's largest ISPs, seek to legally challenge the Digital Economy Act which was rushed through parliament during its last days prior to the election. TalkTalk and BT argue that the DEA infringes human rights and places large ISPs (with over 400,000 customers) at a disadvantage. They also believe the DEA could conflict with existing European Legislation such as the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, and the E-Commerce Directive — the latter stating that ISPs are not responsible for the actions of their customers. The Act, which saw twenty thousand letters sent to MPs in protest, contains measures to see websites suspected of distributing illegal material blocked, and Internet users disconnected or reported to copyright holders.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Who watches the watchmen? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm posting this anonymously, but it's something that has happened that has shacked me up a bit. A close friend of mine was in a confrontation with a boyfriend, who turned out used to work for the US Department of Defense. Apparently he has friends in the secret service that does work for groups that investigate things such as counter-terrorism.

His friend suspected her of cheating on him, and had a log of all her text messages and confronted her with it. It's an embarrassing situation with a lot of drama, to say the least, so she has no intention of exposing him. But what has basically happened was that this person was able to arrange a friend who is in a government agency to perform a full wire tap. He pulled a picture that she had sent someone from nearly 3 months before he'd even known her. At first I was quite skeptical that it was even a possibility. I was under the clear impression that he had somehow managed to get into her phone physically, and simply read her messages, but it wasn't the case.

My question to Slashdot is, does the general public know how easily the powers the US government has in monitoring and in this case abusing her rights? I was completely shocked to find this out, and I've been relatively in tune with the technical and security-related media and have never heard of this happening. How much trouble can this person get into for doing this? What agency would be responsible for perusing this person for committing what i feel is a crime against all parties involved 4th amendment rights. If I've -EVER- had a push to take personal encryption serious, this is it. AT&T was the carrier, iPhone was the device and the persons phone wasn't even in her own name, it was under another parties. I've inspected the phone and have found zero evidence of tampering.

Apparently this person has confessed to the same person he did this to that this is the same way he managed to catch his ex-wife cheating, and he has serious trust issues at this point and has done it a few times since he started dating. How wide-spread is this practice? Does the media have any idea how easily these monitoring technologies can be abused?

Comment Re:Not possible (to lock it well enough) (Score 1) 435

by Techmeology (#30216568) Attached to: Would You Use a Free Netbook From Google?
The parent poster does make a good point. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that Google does do this. I doubt a general purpose machine (which, ultimately, it'd have to be in order to run the Linux kernel) could be locked well enough to prevent someone installing another operating system (Linux or possibly even otherwise) on their free netbook (it's the same problem DRM faces). Google'd have to stop giving them away sooner or later.

Comment Re:It's not about the patent, it's about the lying (Score 5, Insightful) 323

by Techmeology (#29907555) Attached to: Amazon Patents Changing Authors' Words
Pirates can work together. Suppose you have ten pirates. They each download a copy of the book. They then compare their copies with each other - crosschecking them (after, of course, stripping the DRM). Nine of the ten books use "to be or not to be", and one uses "to exist or not to exist", and similarly for other words. They may then produce a more accurate copy of the book. So now, instead of pirate versions being technically superior (due to the lack of DRM), they're also more accurate! Well done, Amazon, you've patented a wonderful scheme to ensure people don't trust genuine products! Normally I am very anti-intellectual property. On this occasion, however, I do hope Amazon is granted it and enforces it. Perhaps it would some day prevent someone else doing the same.

Comment DRM (Score 2, Interesting) 520

by Techmeology (#29603435) Attached to: Wii Update 4.2 Tries (and Fails) To Block Homebrew
DRM DRM DRM DRM DRM DRM DRM.
This is to updates as DRM is to using stuff. It's all a big commercialistic manipulation attempt. People don't like to be manipulated. Thus it fails miserably. There's also that warm fuzzy feeling when the hacked version solves bugs too:D Bonus "learn your lesson" points if they have to replace the bricked consoles (which, under most consumer law, they should).

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