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China

China's Controversial Brain Surgery To Cure Drug Addiction 385

Posted by timothy from the than-a-bottle-in-front-of-me dept.
kkleiner writes "A small handful of doctors in China are using a highly controversial procedure to rid people of drug addiction by destroying a part of patients' brains. The procedure involves drilling small holes into the skulls of patients and inserting long electrodes that destroy a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. This area, often referred to as the "pleasure center" of the brain, is the major nucleus of the brain's reward circuit. Is it worth being cured of addiction if, losing the addiction, we also lose part of who we are?" The practice has been officially banned, but apparently continues nonetheless.
Security

Iran Claims New Cyberattacks On Industrial Sites 75

Posted by Soulskill from the christmas-gift-from-the-nsa dept.
wiredmikey writes "Iranian officials on Tuesday said a 'Stuxnet-like' cyberattack hit some industrial units in a southern province. 'A virus had penetrated some manufacturing industries in Hormuzgan province, but its progress was halted,' Ali Akbar Akhavan said, quoted by the ISNA news agency. Akhavan said the malware was 'Stuxnet-like' but did not elaborate, and that the attack had occurred over the 'past few months.' One of the targets of the latest attack was the Bandar Abbas Tavanir Co, which oversees electricity production and distribution in Hormuzgan and adjacent provinces. He also accused 'enemies' of constantly seeking to disrupt operations at Iran's industrial units through cyberattacks, without specifying how much damage had been caused. Iran has blamed the U.S. and Israel for cyberattacks in the past. In April, it said a voracious malware attack had hit computers running key parts of its oil sector and succeeded in wiping data off official servers."

Comment It isn't their job (Score 1) 120

by NynexNinja (#42324295) Attached to: Australian ISP iiNet Walks Out of Piracy Warning System Talks
It isn't the ISP's job to do deep packet inspection on their customers, nor is it their job to restrict or remove their customers access to their pipe. I would say in the case of public safety it might be reasonable, but not because a third party doesn't like what the customer is downloading? Be real.
Crime

New Call For Turing Pardon 231

Posted by samzenpus from the give-him-a-break dept.
mikejuk writes "As 2012, Alan Turing Year, draws to close a group of highly regarded UK scientists, including Professor Stephen Hawking, have repeated the call for a posthumous pardon for Turing's criminal conviction in a letter to the Telegraph. The letter has re-opened the debate, which is controversial even for those who support the idea that Turing was treated in an unfair and appalling way, was formally acknowledged by the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009 when he apologized for the treatment Turing had received. In February Justice Minister Lord McNally rebuffed a 23,000 signature petition for a pardon saying: 'A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offense.'"
Crime

Search For "Foolproof Suffocation" Missed In Casey Anthony Case 379

Posted by samzenpus from the day-late-and-a-dollar-short dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Orlando Sentinel reports that a google search was made for the term 'foolproof suffocation' on the Anthony family's computer the day Casey Anthony's 2-year-old daughter Caylee was last seen alive by her family — a search that did not surface at Casey Anthony's trial for first degree murder. In the notorious 31 days which followed, Casey Anthony repeatedly lied about her and her daughter's whereabouts and at Anthony's trial, her defense attorney argued that her daughter drowned accidentally in the family's pool. Anthony was acquitted on all major charges in her daughter's death, including murder. Though computer searches were a key issue at Anthony's murder trial, the term 'foolproof suffocation' never came up. 'Our investigation reveals the person most likely at the computer was Casey Anthony,' says investigative reporter Tony Pipitone. Lead sheriff's Investigator Yuri Melich sent prosecutors a spreadsheet that contained less than 2 percent of the computer's Internet activity that day and included only Internet data from the computer's Internet Explorer browser – one Casey Anthony apparently stopped using months earlier — and failed to list 1,247 entries recorded on the Mozilla Firefox browser that day — including the search for 'foolproof suffocation.' Prosecutor Jeff Ashton said in a statement to WKMG that it's 'a shame we didn't have it. (It would have) put the accidental death claim in serious question.'"

Comment this only applies to cloud providers (Score 1) 403

by NynexNinja (#42041167) Attached to: Senate Bill Rewrite Lets Feds Read Your E-mail Without Warrants
Obviously cloud providers like GMail, Yahoo, etc are effected by this. People running mail servers out of their house or their own private property are going to still be protected by fourth amendment protections. Although, email still flows unecrypted into collection points setup in 2002 (carnivore), so this might be one way they will still be able to view email even if you run the mail server outside of a cloud provider. If this bill passes, the only thing I'd do different is probably shut down my Gmail account and go back to using my business domain (hosted at my house in a rack)
Security

Spoken Commands Crash Bank Phone Lines 178

Posted by samzenpus from the initiate-self-destruct-sequence dept.
mask.of.sanity writes "A security researcher has demonstrated a series of attacks that are capable of disabling touch tone and voice activated phone systems, forcing them to disclose sensitive information. The commands can be keyed in using touchtones or even using the human voice. In one test, a phone system run by an unnamed Indian bank had dumped customer PINs. In another, a buffer overflow was triggered against a back-end database. Other attacks can be used to crash phone systems outright."
Hardware Hacking

'Wiki Weapon Project' Wants Your 3D-Printable Guns 570

Posted by timothy from the next-round-of-illegal-shapes dept.
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Earlier this month, University of Texas law student Cody Wilson and a small group of friends who call themselves 'Defense Distributed' launched an initiative they've dubbed the 'Wiki Weapon Project.' Their goal: to raise $20,000 to design and release blueprints for the world's first entirely 3D-printable gun. If all goes according to plan, RepRap users will soon be able to turn the project's CAD designs into an operational firearm capable of shooting at least one standard .22 caliber bullet, all in the privacy of their own garage. Wilson and his handful of collaborators at Defense Distributed plan to use the money they raise to buy or rent a $10,000 Stratysys 3D printer and also to hold a 3D-printable gun design contest with a $1,000 or $2,000 prize for the winning entry — Wilson says they've already received gun design ideas from fans in Arkansas and North Carolina. Once the group has successfully built a reliable 3D-printed gun with the Stratysys printer, it plans to adapt the design for the cheaper and more widely distributed Reprap model. The group had already raised more than $2,000 through the fundraising platform Indiegogo, but the site took down their page and froze their funds on Tuesday. They're continuing to seek donations through their website via Paypal and Bitcoin."

Comment so basically (Score 1) 1469

by NynexNinja (#41069837) Attached to: The Mathematics of 'Legitimate Rape' and Pregnancy
if she really wanted it, she'd keep it, otherwise she'd abort it... thats a nice backwoods theory. its nice that we have the people making the laws in this country coming up with this half-baked theories. Maybe they will use these half-baked theories to further take away women's rights? Lets take one step forward, and five steps back. :(

Comment Craig Wishes (Score 2) 63

by NynexNinja (#40941657) Attached to: Craigslist Drops Exclusive License To Your Posts
Craigslist could only wish that people who use their site use it because they want Craig Newmark to exclusively own the rights to their postings... People don't use craigslist because they want craigslist to own the content, they do it to sell something. If it isn't craigslist, it is one of the other 500 sites that do the same thing. I think most people who stop using that site if they thought for one second that what they are submitting is not under their control.
Security

Iran's Oil Industry Hit By Cyber Attacks 115

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the causing-industrial-accidents-for-fun-and-profit dept.
wiredmikey writes "Iran disconnected computer systems at a number of its oil facilities in response to a cyber attack that hit multiple industry targets during the weekend. A source at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) reportedly told Reuters that a virus was detected inside the control systems of Kharg Island oil terminal, which handles the majority of Iran's crude oil exports. In addition, computer systems at Iran's Oil Ministry and its national oil company were hit. There has been no word on the details of the malware found, but computer systems controlling several of Iran's oil facilities were disconnected from the Internet as a precaution. Oil Ministry spokesman Ali Reza Nikzad-Rahbar told Mehr News Agency on Monday that the attack had not caused significant damage and the worm had been detected before it could infect systems."

Comment Re:Yandex may have flipped their evil bit. (Score 1) 170

by NynexNinja (#39759691) Attached to: Google Shutting Out Rivals, Claims Russian Search Engine Yandex
It's pure paranoia to think that a web (HTTP) crawler is doing something malicious by looking for open HTTP servers. That is like saying that a SMTP crawler looking for open mail relays to add to a blacklist is doing something malicious by scanning networks looking for open SMTP servers.

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I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato

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