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Security

Submission + - Wrongly detained man dies of spinal cancer

Submitted by
Forestry
Forestry writes: "BoingBoing.net sums up the article which appeared in NY Times:
A Hong Kong computer programmer who had legally resided in the US for 15 years (since he was 17) and fathered two American children went for his final green card interview and was locked up, detained until he died of cancer that the DHS refused to treat him for. He had overstayed a visa (the DHS sent a key notice to the wrong address), and this prompted the DHS to lock him away and demand that he waive all right to immigration appeal and be immediately deported. In detention, his complaints of excruciating back pain were treated as fakery, and he was dragged around in shackles after he lost the ability to walk..."
Privacy

Submission + - Government Wants All Your Credit Card Transactions

Submitted by Littlewink
Littlewink writes: Hidden in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a a sweeping provision that would affect the privacy of all Americans who use credit/debit cards and the operations of most American businesses. The provision requires the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information most electronic transactions to the federal government. This includes Internet transactions with eBay. Amazon, and Google.
The Internet

Submission + - Ethics of web-scraping? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm starting up a website, and it needs a big database. I'm working on my own on this project, and I don't really have a good way to fill the database. There is an existing website that serves a different purpose, and it is has a huge database of info. It is really a wealth of information. Is it ok to download all of their data, and then process that into data for my database? I know this data took them a long time to gather. The data is a list of products by other companies, so they don't own a copyright on the actual data. I emailed the site owners if I could be copied a portion of the database, but they wouldn't go for it. It isn't mentioned in their TOS, and the "robots.txt" file just mentions not posting to their forum. Legally I think it is allowed, but what about ethically?
Republicans

Submission + - McCain says he doesn't know how to use a computer!

Submitted by sunny_kr
sunny_kr writes: Here is a story in The Daily Voice: McCain admits he doesn't know how to use a computer Link: http://thedailyvoice.com/voice/2008/06/mccain-admits-he-doesnt-know-h-000740.php John McCain says he doesn't know how to use a computer. In a video interview with Yahoo's Political team and Politico.com, McCain admitted he is computer illiterate. When asked if he preferred a Mac or a PC, McCain said "neither." "I am a illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all the assistance I can get," McCain said. In a computer-dominated world, McCain's professed computer ignorance may raise questions again about his .... Watch it YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= — mMyoDZGYk In the blogs: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/11/mccain-admits-he-doesnt-k_n_106478.html
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA 'threw in towel', then threw 'sucker punch' (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA threw in the towel, all right, but was only doing it in preparation for throwing a 'sucker punch'. After dropping its 'making available' case, Warner v. Cassin, before Judge Robinson could decide whether to dismiss or not, it was only trying to do an 'end run' (if I may mix my sports metaphors) around the judge's deciding the motion and freezing discovery. It immediately, and secretly, filed a new case against the family, calling this one 'Warner v. Does 1-4'. In their papers the lawyers 'forgot to mention' that the new case was 'related'. As a result, Does 1-4 was assigned to another judge, who knew nothing about the old case. The RIAA lawyers also may have forgotten that they couldn't bring any more cases over this same claim, since they'd already dismissed it twice before. Not to worry, NYCL wrote letters to both judges, reminding them of what the RIAA lawyers had forgotten."
Editorial

Submission + - Infringing copyright isn't stealing (canada.com)

Submitted by
SpaceAdmiral
SpaceAdmiral writes: "Just because the movie studios tell us that infringing copyright is stealing doesn't make it so. According to this informative article by Rory McGreal: "Factually and historically in the British Common Law countries like Canada and the United States, copyright was instituted to promote learning. The first copyright law, the Statute of Queen Anne, 1710, was entitled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning." U.S. copyright law is based on this act "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." In fact, these first copyright laws were introduced to limit, and not to protect, the rights of the content owners. The copyright was initiated specifically to promote learning by removing the perpetual rights of the printers, transferring the rights to the authors and imposing a reasonable time limit on their privilege.""
Cellphones

Submission + - Cell Phones Pop Popcorn Kernels (seriouseats.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: No microwaves or ovens nearby? Videos coming out of France and Japan show a feature most cell phone manufacturers are not likely to promote: when they ring, cell phones pop popcorn kernels. And we put these things next to our heads?
Software

Submission + - Who thinks Firehose software is working right? 6

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "I find the Firehose software to be infuriating. It seems to have no 'stickiness' but constantly reverts to other views and searches than what I was looking at. I'm about ready to give up on it unless they tell me they recognize it's dumb and are doing something to make it work right. Am I the only one who feels this way?"
Linux Business

Submission + - Amanda 2.6 is released! (zmanda.com)

Submitted by
amanda-backup
amanda-backup writes: "Amanda 2.6.0 is out of the door: http://www.zmanda.com/amanda-26-released.html Amanda 2.6.0 represents a huge step forward in Amanda's evolution — improving ease of installation and configuration, security, and scalability. Furthermore, this release makes Amanda a platform to develop advanced backup and archiving applications and makes it easier for developers to contribute significant functionality."
United States

Submission + - NIST Announces Reverse Leap Day

Submitted by dgatwood
dgatwood writes: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced a correction as a result of small errors in leap second calculations arising out of the gradual slowing of the expansion of the universe. At precisely 1:00 A.M. Eastern Daylight Saving Time, the date will skip forward by 24 hours to Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008. Director James Turner described this as the first "reverse leap day" in recorded history. He added that he expected a similar correction each year for at least the next seven years.

Americans are advised to immediately adjust their clocks and calendars forward to April 2nd. Director Turner warned, however, that not all countries in the world have agreed to this change yet. "Americans who regularly interact with people in other countries should expect some minor confusion until this all sorts itself out," Turner said, adding that "We considered simply dropping February 29th, but decided that would be too confusing."

For more information, see the NIST Coordinated Universal Time page at http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/faqs/time.htm.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Kernel.org announces Upgrading to FreeBSD 7.0

Submitted by
Warthog9
Warthog9 writes: "I and the other kernel.org Administrators would like to announce our upgrade from Fedora Core 5 to FreeBSD 7.0. From the official announcement at http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/3/31/367 :

" After much deliberation, research and argument in #korg (along with screaming matches between HPA and I over dinner) we are upgrading the kernel.org machines from Fedora Core 5 to FreeBSD 7.0. This decision does not come lightly to the Kernel.org admins, and we would like to point out several key things that helped us form our decision: FreeBSD 7.0 Bests Linux in SMP Performance: http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/06/1313218 & http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/7.0%20Preview.pdf ... "

We feel that this change will help us to better serve our growing number of users."

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