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Earth

OpenStreetMap Sends UK Volunteer Mapper To Antigua 52

Posted by timothy from the new-vacation-policy dept.
Gerv writes "When Google launched their Map Maker community mapping tool last year, they included loads of Caribbean islands. This led Ed Parsons (chief Google Maps guy) to say that he was sad there wasn't any fieldwork involved. Well, now OpenStreetMap have gone one better — following a successful Pledgebank pledge, they have got together the money to send one randomly-chosen guy to Antigua for a week to work on the OpenStreetMap map!"
The Internet

UK Government Abandons Piracy Legislation 155

Posted by CmdrTaco from the abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter-here dept.
arcticstoat writes "Following last year's reports of a scheme to 'ban' pirates from the Internet via ISPs in the UK, it looks as though the UK government has now decided to back down on the plan, saying that it hopes it won't have to apply 'the heavy hand of legislation'. The UK's Intellectual Property Minister, David Lammy, said that 'I'm not sure it's actually going to be possible,' as a result of the complexities of enforcing such legislation. Lammy also revealed that he had a different opinion on file sharers than many people in the music industry. He pointed out that there's a big difference between organized counterfeiting gangs and 'younger people not quite buying into the system'. He added that 'we can't have a system where we're talking about arresting teenagers in their bedrooms. People can rent a room in an hotel and leave with a bar of soap — there's a big difference between leaving with a bar of soap and leaving with the television.'"
Cellphones

(Useful) Stupid BlackBerry Tricks? 238

Posted by kdawson from the maze-of-twisty-stupid-tricks dept.
Wolfger writes "Continuing the recent (useful) stupid theme: I've recently become a BlackBerry user, and I'm in love with the obvious(?) tricks, such as installing MidpSSH to access my home box remotely. But I'd like to know what more experienced Crackberry addicts can share."
Government

Watching Tonight's Presidential Debate Online 349

Posted by CmdrTaco from the play-the-drinking-game dept.
farkinga writes "For those of us that no longer have a television, live TV events can be a challenge to watch. Fortunately, tonight's Presidential Debate has attracted the attention of most US broadcasters, many of whom will provide online viewing options. Leading the way is Hulu, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp, who will stream the Fox-branded feed tonight — assuming they worked out the bandwidth issues that came up during the second debate!"
Music

Submission + - RIAA trial verdict is in: jury finds Thomas liable (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by
jdogs60
jdogs60 writes: "Duluth, Minnesota — After just four hours of deliberation and two days of testimony, a jury found that Jammie Thomas was liable for infringing the record labels' copyrights on all 24 the 24 recordings at issue in the case of Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas. The jury awarded $9,250 in statutory damages per song, after finding that the infringement was "willful," out of a possible total of $150,000 per song. The grand total? $222,000 in damages."
Security

Journal Journal: Merchant DB hack compromises MasterCard CC #s

Journal by ekimminau

At 4:30PM EST today, 15 August 2007, I logged into the CitiBank website for my CitiBank MasterCard (referred to from here on as CB MC)and was surprised to be presented with a blinking red notification that my card had been flagged for "suspicious activity". I was directed to contact CitiBank customer service. What follows is my efforts to determine what has happened.
Encryption

Submission + - Finnish court rules CSS "ineffective"

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In an unanimous decision released today, Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is "ineffective". The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments that ban the circumvention of "effective technological measures". The legislation is based on EU Copyright Directive from 2001. According to both Finnish copyright law and the underlying directive, only such protection measure is effective, "which achieves the protection objective." http://www.turre.com/blog/?p=102
Censorship

Submission + - Pandora blocking users from outside USA and UK

Submitted by
[Nahoo]
[Nahoo] writes: "Pandora Internet Radio is blocking users from outside of USA and UK. I received a mail saying that my IP indicated I was listening from another country and that the service will be blocked as from May 3... "we must begin proactively preventing access to Pandora's streaming service for most countries outside of the U.S." There is nothing on their blog (http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/) yet but I guess they will be updating it soon. Internet radio is dying..."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Why Powered USB Is Needed Part 3: USB 3.0

Submitted by
Diablo-D3
Diablo-D3 writes: "I've written a third, and hopefully final part, to the originally two part Why Powered USB Is Needed article that got Slashdotted two days ago, and this response is pretty much due to Slashdot users asking smart questions and poking a few holes in my argument. The third part covers how USB 3.0 essentially needs to follow in Firewire's footsteps to truly succeed and overcome people's views on USB as just a low bandwidth bus that no one uses seriously and, combined with New Powered USB, could overtake Firewire in high bandwidth applications."
Music

Submission + - One million CC albums downloaded with BitTorrent

Submitted by
lkratz
lkratz writes: "Jamendo, a free music community, has distributed freely and legally more than one million albums using the popular peer to peer technology BitTorrent. The music is Creative Commons Licensed and is coming from everywhere in the world. Inspired by Chris Anderson's theory, this online music platform helps volunteered artists promote themselves in search engine like mininova or torrentz.

Music is free, but supporting these artists is ok too !"
Security

Submission + - Sen McCain's MySpace page gets hacked

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9014483&intsrc=hm_ list Visitors to Sen. John McCain's MySpace page were likely surprised today by a statement that the Senator has reversed his position on gay marriage and "come out in full support of gay marriage ... particularly marriage between passionate females." Most won't be surprised that the statement was apparently posted as a prank. The co-founder of an online news site, who said he designed the MySpace template used for McCain's page, claimed responsibility for changing the site . Mike Davidson, cofounder of Newsvine, said on his Web site that he commandeered the MySpace page because McCain's office used a design template of his without providing him credit. Davidson also said his imagery was used on the page and his server is used serve up McCain's MySpace images.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Outlaws 3rd Party IM Clients

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With the latest update to the MSN Instant Messenger client, now called Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft has required all users to sign a new contract which among other things forbids the use of 3rd party instant messenger clients to connect to the MSN messenger service, such as the AJAX Meebo client, Gaim, and Trillian among others. Worth noting, they do provide a list of authorized 3rd party clients, such as Yahoo Messenger, that are allowed access to the service.

Excerpt: "In using the service, you may not use any unauthorized third party software or service to access the Microsoft instant messaging network currently known as the .NET Messenger service."
Mozilla

Submission + - Firefox javascript/cookie vulnerability uncovered

Submitted by mybecq
mybecq writes: Michal Zalewski has uncovered and disclosed a serious vulnerability (BugZilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37044 5) in Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1, whereby a javascript string containing '\x00' (escaped NUL character) can cause Firefox to allow malicious sites to manipulate cookies for third-party webpages.

A demonstration of the vulnerability is available. The vulnerability requires javascript and session cookies to be enabled to be able to be exploited.

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