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Comment Re:Plan? It's already started (Score 1) 338

I don't really see this as a problem (violations of the AUP should be grounds for termination of service), HOWEVER (that is a *big* however), two things need to be in place before this should be reasonably enforceable (and some of these elements are pretty easy to do, and may be already done):

[These are in no particular order]
  1. 1. ISP (COX in this case) with said AUP needs to give basic education to their customers on signup/setup for things like WiFi security - a simple "to let you know unsecured WiFi isn't allowed, this is what you need to do to get a secured WiFi . Alternatively, for $ we will make sure it is setup correctly for you" (LET ME STRESS: the "setup for you" should be optional, perhaps a waiver stating "I understand" if you don't have them set it up for you.)
  2. 2. *** MOST IMPORTANT *** The ISP (COX) cannot be the EXCLUSIVE provider for the residence (Yes, I am looking at you, apartment complex I live in. I have NO option but COX, meaning that since I need Internet for my Job, I could be screwed if this happened. This typically isn't an issue for me, since I am relatively secure in my knowledge on how to setup networks/WiFi/etc).
  3. There might need to be a couple other things, but, these two stood out to me as almost requirements at this point (with policies like COX has).

Blackberry

Submission + - Is Microsoft Planning To Buy RIM? (itworld.com)

jfruhlinger writes: "By getting Windows Phone 7 on Nokia handsets, Microsoft seems to have firmly set its strategy for the mobile world. Or has it? Today we learned that that Bing will be the default search engine for BlackBerry OS, and Steve Ballmer says that MS will "invest uniquely into the BlackBerry platform." It might just be possible that Microsoft is planning to buy RIM altogether, which may be RIM's only hope to avoid collapse."
AI

Submission + - AI learns to tell "that's what she said" jokes (newscientist.com)

reillymj writes: The Office's Michael Scott is replaceable after all — with a computer. A new piece of software studies the relationships between words to figure out when a sentence or phrase could be the beginning of a "that's what she said" joke. Got the word "wet", "rod", or "hard" in a sentence? Watch out: immature AI humor is bound to follow.
Sony

Submission + - US legislature demands answers after PSN attack (computerandvideogames.com)

rev_media writes: "The US Congress, the United States' legislature for the federal government, has issued a letter to Sony requesting answers for a number of unanswered questions concerning last week's "outside intrusion" of the PlayStation Network.

The two-page letter is signed by Mary Bono Mack, Republican of California, who requests a reply by May 6 (Friday). Replies are requested for 13 questions."

Comment "Temporarily Friend"? (Score 1) 283

Honestly, I think that a lot of people would do the temporary friending (well in the places that don't allow cell phones with cameras in the court houses...and every cell phone pretty much has a camera in it these days). What I find to be amazing is that people have little regard for personal privacy when it comes to the social networking sites (or just don't understand what it really means to them -- or worse don't care).

This wouldn't work for me, I'm content with my kindle or other e-reader (or a real book) when having to sit and wait. I find it offensive that 'Facebook' among other things can be used during jury selection. While I can understand that the attorneys and the courts want the best representation of unbiased people, I think this will turn into abuse of the system on both sides.

I also would argue that there is nothing "temporary" about friending the office. My guess would be that they will start siphoning down your details and storing them for later. If this is to be permissible, there needs to be strict retention policies set forth by the court on the user data (and this should probably be evaluated in a more formal way).

Granted I didn't read TFA. I should probably do so before posting. But in either case, it worries me that people have so little regard for the data they post online and what is done with it. While I am personally careful to post things that I know I don't mind EVERYONE knowing, I am probably in the minority.

Just my $0.003

Facebook

Submission + - Lawyers Using Facebook Research for Jury Selection (wsj.com) 2

unassimilatible writes: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that trial lawyers are increasingly using social networking sites like Facebook to research jurors in real-time during the voir dire process. Armando Villalobos, the district attorney of Cameron County, Brownsville, Texas, last year equipped his prosecutors with iPads to scan the Web during jury selection. But what of the jurors who have their privacy settings restricted to "friends only?" Mr. Villalobos has thought of a potential workaround: granting members of the jury pool free access to the court's wi-fi network in exchange for temporarily "friending" his office. Faustian bargain, or another way to get out of jury duty?
Encryption

Submission + - CPS-3 Encryption Scheme Broken (exophase.com)

zshadow writes: "It's taken awhile, ten years to be exact, but Andreas Naive has successfully managed to break the protection on Capcom's CPS-3 arcade system board. The CPS-3 powered less than a dozen arcade classics, including JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Red Earth, and Street Fighter III. The security system of the CPS-3 was rather advanced for its time. Any tampering to the game's security cartridge would result in the decryption key being erased, thereby rendering the respective cartridge useless. So, the decryption is broken, what does this all mean? In one word: Emulation. Now that the decryption task is done, the folks over at MAME have already started work on a CPS-3 emulator."
Graphics

Submission + - AI behind 'Virtual Van Gogh'

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Jason Green, CTO of Florida-based Medical Development International (MDI), has applied artificial intelligence to produce fine art. 'Using highly sophisticated programming, Green has programmed his computer with the ability to produce original, three-dimensional paintings rivaling present-day masters.' It's hard to know if it's art, but it sure is high-tech: the images are generated with an extremely high resolution of 7,500 by 5,000 pixels. But is the story true? Decide by yourself by looking at more details and a painting by Virtual Van Gogh's, Polyester Candy."
Networking

Time Warner Cable Implements Packet Shaping 492

RFC writes "In a move that may be indicative of modern ISP customer service, Time Warner has announced the introduction of packet shaping technology to its network. 'Packet shaping technology has been implemented for newsgroup applications, regardless of the provider, and all peer-to-peer networks and certain other high bandwidth applications not necessarily limited to audio, video, and voice over IP telephony.' As the poster observes, this essentially renders premium service useless. The company is already warning users that attempts to circumvent these measures is a violation of their Terms of Service."
Biotech

Submission + - Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Growing

Bayoudegradeable writes: What are some of the costs of increased ethanol production? The Times Picayune in New Orleans is reporting on the massive, and growing Dead Zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico. Farm runoff, fertilizers and the such are the direct cause and the increased corn production to fuel the ethanol craze is making things worse. Sounds like more bad news for an area still struggling to rebound from Katrina.

Marriott IT Exec Shares Network Horror Story 98

alphadogg writes "Neil Schubert is only partly kidding when he calls Marriott International's move toward a converged network a horror story. 'I'm here to tell you a terrifying tale of network design, support and administration,' he said at an IT conference in Boston, referring to a major bandwidth crunch caused by guests wielding Slingboxes and other network devices that overran the hotel chain's outdated network. 'One of the things we've learned about our guest networks is we have one of the most foreign, hostile environments known to man in the network administration world ... I can take 100,000 customers a night on that infrastructure and we actually have less incidents of harm than we do on our corporate back-office infrastructure.'"
Google

Submission + - Google Custom Site Search may be hiding results (gidblog.com)

crystalattice writes: "Google's Custom Site Search appears to be less than useful for established sites. According to J de Silva's GIDBlog post, not all the pages related to a search query are being returned. From the article: "If I search Google for [site:gidforums.com auto add slashes], i.e. restricting the search to only my web site, GIDForums, I expect it to return this page, but according to Googles Custom Search Engine, that page doesnt even exist! Notice that its not listed at all; not filtered, and not even stuck inside their infamous supplemental results. But its an old page! In fact the page is very old over 4 years old, actually and Google indexed this page very soon after it was written, and even referred people to the page for at least a couple of years, or more. So why did they remove it? What happened?""
Google

Submission + - Google Search Slowed Down by Vista

Vengance Daemon writes: The United States Justice Department has rejected an antitrust claim made by Google. A New York Times Article states that "...Google has accused Microsoft of designing its latest operating system, Vista, to discourage the use of Google's desktop search program." It then adds that a Justice Department "memo dismissing Google's claims, sent to state attorneys general around the nation, alarmed many of them...Some state officials said they believed that Google's complaint had merit...[and] the memo appears to have backfired. Prosecutors from several states said they intended to pursue the Google accusations with or without the federal government. In response, federal prosecutors are now discussing with the states whether the Justice Department will join them in pursuing the Google complaint." What an odd place to work the Justice Department must be these days.
Security

Submission + - OpenOffice Virus Found in Use (zdnet.com.au)

eldavojohn writes: "Remember the 'SB/Badbunny-A' virus that wasn't in the wild yet? Well, according to Symantec, it is and it's not caring what platform you're running. The respective behaviors of the designated worm in the wild: "On Windows systems, it drops a file called drop.bad which is moved to the system.ini in the user's mIRC folder, while executing the Javascript virus badbunny.js that replicates to other files in the folder. On Apple Mac systems, the worm drops one of two Ruby script viruses in files called badbunny.rb and badbunnya.rb. On Linux systems, the worm drops both badbunny.py as an XChat script and badbunny.pl as a Perl virus.""

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