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Comment what is the point? (Score 5, Insightful) 630

by a302b (#26274809) Attached to: Sex Offenders Must Hand Over Online Passwords
What is the point of this? If the sex-offenders have already been caught and tried, then what does this prove? If they have already been sentenced, then any incriminating evidence is merely extra. If they haven't been tried, then can't they plead the "5th"? Finally, if this is to deter them from doing heinous acts in the future, then what is to stop them from opening another account?

To me, this smacks of government types trying to set a legal precedent for taking over peoples passwords, online identities, etc. Because it is the evil sex offenders, the public won't care. Then later the government can say: "But there is a precedent for taking passwords; its been done for a long time." Then the public shrugs and figures that if it has been going on for a while, then it can't be all that bad. And another personal liberty is thus erased.

Comment use of force (Score 1) 414

by a302b (#26228747) Attached to: Universal Broadband Plan Calls For $44 Billion
Its called the "We've Got A Bigger Army" philosophy. Look up President Jackson and the Trail of Tears for more info on the Executive branch trumping the Supreme Court. Then look at the current administration, and see how many of these attitudes continue in the office to today. I'm not trying to politicize or anything, but merely demonstrate that power (in any situation) tends to create its own rules, whether legitimized or not.
Social Networks

Submission + - Australia uses Facebook to track debtors (yahoo.com)

Submitted by a302b
a302b writes: A Canberra lawyer has been permitted to serve legal documents via Facebook for a couple that defaulted on some loans. He claims he needed to do this because he was unable to track them down to a physical address. At what point does our online presence become "real"? And what opportunities are available for fraud, if social networking sites are considered legal representations of ourselves, even when they can be anonymously created under any name?
Programming

Time to Get Good At Functional Programming? 620

Posted by Soulskill from the dysfunctional-programming-on-the-way-out dept.
prone2tech writes "From an article at Dr. Dobb's: Chipmakers have essentially said that the job of enforcing Moore's Law is now a software problem. They will concentrate on putting more and more cores on a die, and it's up to the software industry to recraft software to take advantage of the parallel-processing capabilities of the new chips. As is argued in this article, this means becoming proficient in parallel functional programming. The bad news? Getting good at functional programming is hard, harder than moving from iterative Pascal or Basic or C coding to object-oriented development. It's an exaggeration but a useful one: When you move to FP, all your algorithms break.'"
The Internet

New .tel TLD Now In Use 175

Posted by timothy from the pay-at-the-tel-booth dept.
rockwood reports that the .tel top level domain has been deployed, "in a first attempt at pushing the recently approved .tel... The top-level domain .tel was approved by ICANN as a sponsored TLD launching on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 to trademark owners of national effect and on February 3, 2009 to anyone who wishes to apply. Its main purpose is as a single management and publishing point for 'internet communication' services, providing a global contacts directory service by housing all types of contact information directly in the DNS."

Comment I have to agree (Score 4, Insightful) 166

by a302b (#25908275) Attached to: Fujitsu Offers Free Laptop Upgrades For Life
From TFA:

This offer is far from comprehensive, though, as it excludes case cracks, small numbers of dead pixels, broken keys, smashed screens, software issues, virus infections or failed batteries that are older than one year.

Basically, the normal wear and tear of a laptop is excluded. This seems particularly negligent regarding failed batteries, as I've noticed that most laptops become almost unusable after a few years. Even with a RAM upgrade after 3 years, it is unlikely to last much longer than that, especially if broken keys and worn out batteries aren't included. (Are batteries even designed to last that long?

Comment annoying "feature" (Score 5, Interesting) 161

by a302b (#25863869) Attached to: Google Turns On User-Tweakable Search Wiki
This seems to just be a way to refine search results and collect more specified data. This is great for Google's aims of collecting all the data in the universe, but an annoying "feature" for me.

I really dislike the "refined" searches, especially as Google's memory lasts for a long time. If I am doing a project on something, or am really interested in a topic (lets say travelling to Timbuktu), I will search it to death. However, a week later, when I am trying to search for something else (say used cars), I have to slog through a bunch of pages about car sales in Timbuktu!

Sigh.

Comment a "privacy" app for Facebook etc? (Score 1) 419

by a302b (#25674553) Attached to: UK Outlines Plan For Internet Black Boxes
I've often thought about this, especially as most of my friends seem to use Facebook and I am certain Facebook would hand over any private data to any government agency that asked.

Instead of joining in the normal way, I would design a "$myname" app for Facebook for my friends who want to stay in touch. That app would have the functionality my profile would normally have, but would be encrypted and all the data would be off Facebook's servers.

Just a thought I've been mulling over recently, especially with the data mining of so many countries lately.
Security

Report Says China Will Demand Source Code 305

Posted by kdawson from the said-the-spider-to-the-fly dept.
An anonymous reader alerts us to a two-week-old story that hasn't gotten much traction in the press to date. A Japanese newspaper and the AP report that China plans to demand source code from hardware manufacturers, and ban the sale of products from companies that don't comply. China is calling this an "obligatory accreditation system for IT security products." The plan is to go into effect next May, according to sources. "Products expected to be subject to the system are those equipped with secret coding, such as [a] contactless smart card system developed by Sony Corp., digital copiers, and computer servers. The Chinese government said it needs the source code to prevent computer viruses taking advantage of software vulnerabilities and to shut out hackers. However, this explanation is unlikely to satisfy concerns that disclosed information might be handed from the Chinese government to Chinese companies. There also are fears that Chinese intelligence services could exploit such confidential information by making it easier to break codes used in... digital devices."
The Internet

How To Clean Up Incorrect Geolocation Information? 392

Posted by samzenpus from the 123-fake-street dept.
zorro6 writes "I thought this might be an interesting question/topic and it would sure help me to get some kind of answer. I recently got internet service from a small, local wireless ISP in my area (south central Colorado, USA). The strange thing is that many, many web sites think I am in Quebec, Canada when I use the service. Evidently some geolocation service thinks my IP address indicates I am in Canada. I have checked the obvious. The WHOIS information for my IP correctly indicates a location of Durango, CO. So the bad info is coming from some more sophisticated geolocation service. My ISP is at a loss as to how to fix this but it is causing me a lot of grief. Many of the ads I get shown on Yahoo! for instance are in French! Certain sites won't sell me goods or services because they don't do business in Canada. So far I know that Yahoo! (or their ad provider), Nvidia, Movielink, etc. all think I am in Canada. I would sure appreciate any help/info on how to get this corrected."
Security

Man Fired When Laptop Malware Downloaded Porn 635

Posted by samzenpus from the your-computer-wants-porn dept.
Geoffrey.landis writes "The Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents fired worker Michael Fiola and initiated procedures to prosecute him for child pornography when they determined that internet temporary files on his laptop computer contained child porn. According to Fiola, 'My boss called me into his office at 9 a.m. The director of the Department of Industrial Accidents, my immediate supervisor, and the personnel director were there. They handed me a letter and said, "You are being fired for a violation of the computer usage policy. You have pornography on your computer. You're fired. Clean out your desk. Let's go."' Fiola said, 'They wouldn't talk to me. They said, "We've been advised by our attorney not to talk to you."' However, prosecutors dropped the case when a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files. Computer forensic analyst Tami Loehrs, who spent a month dissecting the computer for the defense, explained in a 30-page report that the laptop was running corrupted virus-protection software, and Fiola was hit by spammers and crackers bombarding its memory with images of incest and pre-teen porn not visible to the naked eye. The virus protection and software update functions on the laptop had been disabled, and apparently the laptop was 'crippled' by malware. According to Loehrs, 'When they gave him this laptop, it had belonged to another user, and they changed the user name for him, but forgot to change the SMS user name, so SMS was trying to connect to a user that no longer existed ... It was set up to do all of its security updates via the server, and none of that was happening because he was out in the field.' A malware script on the machine surfed foreign sites at a rate of up to 40 per minute whenever the machine was within range of a wireless site."
Communications

In The US, Email Is Only For Old People 383

Posted by Zonk from the late-twenties-and-older-than-dirt dept.
lxw56 writes "Two years after Slashdot discussed the theory that Korean young people were rejecting email, an article at the Slate site written by Chad Lorenz comes to the same conclusion about the United States. 'Those of us older than 25 can't imagine a life without e-mail. For the Facebook generation, it's hard to imagine a life of only e-mail, much less a life before it. I can still remember the proud moment in 1996 when I sent my first e-mail from the college computer lab. It felt like sending a postcard from the future. I was getting a glimpse of how the Internet would change everything--nothing could be faster and easier than e-mail.'"

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