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Censorship

Submission + - Online Call to Shoot President Ruled Free Speech

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "USA Today reports that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the conviction of a man who threatened to shoot President Obama, saying his Internet message board comments amounted to free speech and ruled that prosecutors "failed to present sufficient evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt" that the man "had the subjective intent to threaten a presidential candidate." Walter Bagdasarian was found guilty two years ago of making threats against the presidential candidate in comments he posted on a Yahoo.com financial website after 1 am on Oct. 22, 2008, as Obama's impending victory in the race for the White House was becoming apparent. Bagdasarian told investigators he was drunk at the time. The observation that Obama "will have a 50 cal in the head soon" and a call to "shoot the [racist slur]" weren't violations of the law under which Bagdasarian was convicted because the statute doesn't criminalize "predictions or exhortations to others to injure or kill the president," said the majority opinion written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt. "On a practical level, it's a very thin line between Bagdasarian's free speech and the guy who doesn't just spew threats online but actually carries them out," writes journalist Paul Whitefield. "It's remarkable how inconvenient the law can be at times, isn't it?""
Security

Submission + - Heathrow To Install Facial Recognition Scanners (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Slashdot readers will recall that back in February, Heathrow airport required full body scanning for select individuals. Now we learn that the airport is installing facial recognitions scanners. The scanners will be used to capture passengers' faces before entering security checks and again before boarding. The stated goal is to prevent illigal immigration."
Encryption

Submission + - Norway terrorism: Help decode encrypted document (pccts.com) 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It appears that the perpetrator of Friday's terrorist attack in Norway, claimed to be part of the PCCTS, or the Knights Templar. On the PCCTS home page, there is a number of creepy hidden links, including what appears to be a interactive strategic map of the USA. Google has also revealed a PDF that appears to contain an encrypted message.

The Slashdot community has helped Norwegians with decoding encrypted information before, and although the circumstances are far more gloomy this time around, I hope the crypto experts amongst you would still like to have a go at it. Who knows — maybe it might even help prevent further loss of lives.
Networking

Submission + - Google+ Suspending User Accounts Enmass? (zdnet.com)

Submitted by
ideonexus
ideonexus writes: "Reports of Google+ deleting user accounts all over, including Limor Fried — AKA Lady Ada / Adafruit Industries recently featured in Wired Magazine and former Google employee Kirrily “Skud” Robert for violating Google's identity ToS. Other users are finding themselves locked out of their accounts without an explanation of how they violated the ToS. The worst part for these individuals is that a lock-out of Google+ includes being locked out of all Google services, including email, calendar, and documents."
Programming

Submission + - 'The Code Has Already Been Written'

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: John D. Cook points out there's a major divide between the way scientists and programmers view the software they write. Scientists see their software as a kind of exoskeleton, an extension of themselves. Programmers, on the other hand, see their software as something they will hand over to someone else, more like building a robot. To a scientist, the software soup's done when they get what they want out of it, while professional programmers give more thought to reproducibility, maintainability, and correctness. So what happens when the twain meet? 'The real tension,' says Cook, 'comes when a piece of research software is suddenly expected to be ready for production. The scientist will say 'the code has already been written' and can't imagine it would take much work, if any, to prepare the software for its new responsibilities. They don't understand how hard it is for an engineer to turn an exoskeleton into a self-sufficient robot.'

Submission + - Victory for evolution in Texas (ncse.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Pop the champagne corks. The Texas Board of Education has unanimously come down on the side of evolution. In an 8-0 vote, the board today approved scientifically accurate high school biology textbook supplements from established mainstream publishers--and did not approve the creationist-backed supplements from International Databases, LLC.
Medicine

Submission + - Personal DNA Sequencing Machine One Step Closer

Submitted by oxide7
oxide7 writes: A new, low cost semiconductor-based gene sequencing machine has been developed and may unlock the door to advanced medicines and life itself. A team led by Jonathan Rothberg of Ion Torrent in Guilford, Conn is working on a system which uses semiconductors to decode DNA, dramatically reducing costs and taking them closer to being able to reach the goal of a $1000 human genome test. The current optical based system costs around $49000 and is already on the market and being used in over 40 countries.
Communications

Submission + - Undersea Cables Damaged by Earthquake (gigaom.com)

Submitted by
ColoradoAuthor
ColoradoAuthor writes: "The horrific earthquake and the ensuing tsunami in Japan have caused widespread damage to undersea communications, according to data collected by telecom industry sources. Initially, it was thought that the damage to the cables that connect Japan and Asia to each other and other parts of the world was limited, but new data shows the extent of the problems."

Submission + - White House wants new copyright law (cnet.com) 1

Submitted by slewfo0t
slewfo0t writes: The White House today proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making "illegal streaming" of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers.
Science

Submission + - Physicists Develop Quantum Public Key Encryption (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "Public key cryptography allows anybody to encrypt a message using a public key but only those with another private key can decrypt the message. That's possible because of certain mathematical functions that are easy to perform in one direction but hard to do in reverse. The most famous example is multiplication. It's easy to multiply two numbers together to get a third but hard to start with the third number and work out its factors. Now Japanese researchers have discovered a quantum problem that is hard to solve in one direction but easy to do in reverse. This asymmetry, they say, could form the basis of a new kind of quantum public key cryptography. Their system is based on the problem of distinguishing between two ensembles of quantum states. This is similar to the problem of determining whether two graphs are identical, ie whether they correspond vertex-for-vertex and edge-for-edge. Increasing the complexity of the graph can always make this problem practically impossible for a quantum computer to solve in a reasonable time. But knowing the structure of a subset of the graph makes this problem easy, so this acts as a kind of private key for decrypting messages."
Cloud

Submission + - IsoHunt To Court: Google Is The Bigger Problem (techspot.com)

Submitted by Krystalo
Krystalo writes: isoHunt is still fighting its legal battle with the MPAA. In the latest episode, the torrent website filed a reply brief to the US Court of Appeals in which it suggests that Google, and not IsoHunt, is the largest BitTorrent search engine on the Internet.
United States

Submission + - White House wants to make IP infringement a felony (cnet.com) 2

Submitted by
Shikaku
Shikaku writes: "The White House today proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making "illegal streaming" of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers.

In a 20-page white paper (PDF), the Obama administration called on the U.S. Congress to fix "deficiencies that could hinder enforcement" of intellectual property laws."
Microsoft

Submission + - The Fundamental Failure of Endpoint Security (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: Most people owning a PC are familiar with Microsoft's patching process — it's easy and it's there. For a lot of them, it also gives the impression that Microsoft's products are chock-full of flaws. But, according to recent research, it's not the vulnerabilities in Microsoft's products we should worry about, but those in third-party software. Even though the number of discovered vulnerabilities has slightly decreased in the last two years, the worrying fact is that 84 percent of all those found in 2010 can be exploited from a remote location, and that 69 percent are tied to third-party products that may or may not have a quality patching mechanism in place.
NASA

Submission + - A Superhero Scrubs the Air: The Mighty Houseplant (wsj.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: The humble houseplant is on the attack. Building on NASA experiments for air purification in space, scientists are pinpointing plant species—from the peace lily to the asparagus fern—that are particularly skillful at cleaning indoor air of pollutants that can cause a range of health problems.

A growing body of global research is showing plants can reduce dust particles and contaminants, such as formaldehyde and benzene, that come from cigarette smoke, paint, furniture, building materials and other sources.

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