Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Science

Joachim De Posada Talks About Delayed Gratification Screenshot-sm 105

Posted by samzenpus from the a-bird-in-hand dept.
grrlscientist writes "Here is a short talk in which Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification — and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat their marshmallow."
Censorship

Even More Restriction For German Internet 330

Posted by kdawson from the nose-of-the-camel dept.
tikurion writes "It's only been a few weeks since the law dubbed Zugangserschwerungsgesetz (access impediment law) was passed in the German Parliament despite over 140,000 signatures of people opposed to it. The law will go into effect in mid-October 2009. Now Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen implied in an interview that she is planning on extending the reach of the law, claiming '...or else the great Internet is in danger of turning into a lawless range of chaos, where you're allowed to bully, insult, and deceive limitlessly.' More on golem.de via Google translate (here is the German original)."
Government

German Court Bans E-Voting As Currently Employed 82

Posted by timothy from the grandfathered-in dept.
Kleiba writes "The highest German Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, Federal Constitutional Court) ruled that electronic voting machines like Nedap ESD1 and ESD2 are not permissible in Germany. Der Spiegel, a well-known German newspaper, is featuring article on today's decision (in German; Babelfish translation here) which was the result of a lawsuit by physicist Ulrich Wiesner and his father Joachim Wiesner, a professor emeritus of political science. The main argument against the voting machines in the eyes of the Court is that they conflict with the principle of transparency. 2009 is a major election year for Germany, with parliamentary elections in the fall." Reader Dr. Hok writes "Voting machines are not illegal per se, but with these machines it wasn't possible to verify the results after the votes were cast. The verification procedure by the German authorities was flawed, too: only specimens were tested, not the machines actually used in the elections, and the detailed results (including the source code) were not made public. The results of the election remain legally valid, though."
The Courts

Italian Red Lights Rigged With Short Yellow Light 353

Posted by timothy from the decent-pellet-gun-might-help dept.
suraj.sun writes with an excerpt from Ars Technica which brings to mind the importance of auditable code for hardware used in law enforcement: "It's no secret that red light cameras are often used to generate more ticket revenue for the cities that implement them, but a scam has been uncovered in Italy that has led to one arrest and 108 investigations over traffic systems being rigged to stop sooner for the sole purpose of ticketing more motorists."
Security

Hackers Clone Passports In Driveby RFID Heist 251

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-not-exactly dept.
pnorth writes "A hacker has shown how easy it is to clone US passport cards that use RFID by conducting a drive-by test on the streets of San Francisco. Chris Paget, director of research and development at Seattle-based IOActive, used a $250 Motorola RFID reader and an antenna mounted in a car's side window and drove for 20 minutes around San Francisco, with a colleague videoing the demonstration. During the demonstration he picked up the details of two US passport cards. Using the data gleaned it would be relatively simple to make cloned passport cards he said. Paget is best known for having to abandon presenting a paper at the Black Hat security conference in Washington in 2007 after an RFID company threatened him with legal action." Apparently this is a little unfair — he sniffed the data, he didn't actually make a fake passport.
GNU is Not Unix

FSFE Launches Free PDF Readers Campaign 198

Posted by kdawson from the prety-darn-fine dept.
FSFE Fellow writes "The Fellowship of the Free Software Foundation Europe is proud to announce its latest initiative: pdfreaders.org, a site providing information about PDF with links to Free Software PDF readers for all major operating systems. FSFE president Georg Greve says: 'Interoperability, competition and choice are primary benefits of Open Standards that translate into vendor-independence and better value for money for customers. Although many versions of PDF offer all these benefits for formatted text and documents, files in PDF formats typically come with information that users need to use a specific product. pdfreaders.org provides an alternative to highlight the strengths of PDF as an Open Standard.'"
Security

WarCloning, the New WarDriving? 154

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the now-everyone-with-a-laptop-in-their-car-is-gonna-get-searched dept.
ChrisPaget writes "After my legal skirmishes with HID a while back, The Register has coverage of my latest RFID work — cloning Passport Cards and Electronic Drivers Licenses from a moving vehicle. Full details will be released at Shmoocon this weekend, but in the meantime there's video of the equipment and articles all over the place."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - School uniforms to track kids using GPS

Submitted by
Gary
Gary writes: "Trutex a school uniform maker based in Lancashire, UK is considering adding satellite tracking devices to its clothing range so parents will know where their children are. The move comes after Bladerunner another English clothing company revealed it was selling stab-proof t-shirts, hooded tops and school blazers to parents worried about their children being attacked."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Copy Protection Goes Too Far (kotaku.com) 2

Submitted by Synner
Synner writes: Anti-piracy is squeezing the legitimate user once again. The new Bioshock game from 2K Studios only allows you to install the game twice, no ifs ands or buts. Even though the "Update" for the article says that 2K has replied with a solution, if you read the following forum posts, users have tried the fix and has not been confirmed to work. You might want to hurry before the thread is locked and or deleted, like so many others. This might fuel the fires of piracy, to give legitimate customers a work around until they get the official company line.
The Courts

Submission + - Germans reject file-sharing paranoia (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
athloi
athloi writes: "German prosecutors have begun denying requests to force ISPs to identify the subscribers behind IP addresses, saying that the alleged file-sharing was a "petty offense." According to German-language Heise Online, the court said that the labels did not explain how a "criminally relevant damage" could have arisen from the alleged file-sharing. Unlike the US legal system, German law has no provision allowing for civil proceedings to obtain ISP subscriber info.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070802-file -sharing-is-a-petty-offense-say-german-prosecutors .html"
Software

Submission + - Ghostscript unified, long live GPL v2 (kdedevelopers.org)

Submitted by bmcage
bmcage writes: Ghostscript is back, but does it still have a future for printing or on the Desktop with pdf going strong? Whatever happens, everybody should rejoice, as Ghostscript has a new version, a new license, and most importantly, the EPS Ghostscript fork has come to an end.

Welcome back in the fold, GPL Ghostscript! We'll make some room on the hard disk for you.
Power

Submission + - Electric car to change the industry?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: CNNMoney.com is running an article about a Norwegian car company that is hooking up with Google, Tesla, and others to bring an electric car to market that might change the automotive industry the way Dell changed the computer industry.

Slashdot Top Deals

Happiness is twin floppies.

Close