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FBI, IRS Raid Home of Sen. Ted Stevens 539

Posted by kdawson from the longest-serving-republican dept.
A while back we discussed the corruption investigation aimed at Alaska Sen. Ted "series of tubes" Stevens. A number of readers sent us word that the home of Sen. Stevens was raided earlier today by agents of the FBI and the IRS. The focus of the raid was a remodeling project at Stevens's home and the involvement of VECO, an oil company.
Security

Submission + - Attackers Gain Full Control of iPhone

Submitted by i_like_spam
i_like_spam writes: The NYTimes is running a story about an iPhone flaw that has been found and documented by researchers from Independent Security Evaluators. Attackers were able to gain full control of the iPhone either through WiFi or by visiting a website with malicious code. The exploit will be demostrated at BlackHat on Aug. 2nd at 4:45pm. Until then,

Details on the vulnerability, but not a step-by-step guide to hacking the phone, can be found at www.exploitingiphone.com, which the researchers said would be unveiled today.
Security

Submission + - New Iphone Hole Allows Full Control

Submitted by i_like_spam
i_like_spam writes: The NYTimes is running a story about a new Iphone flaw that has been found and documented by researchers from Independent Security Evaluators. Attackers can gain full control of the Iphone either through WiFi or by visiting a website with malicious code. From the article:

Details on the vulnerability, but not a step-by-step guide to hacking the phone, can be found at www.exploitingiphone.com, which the researchers said would be unveiled today.
The Internet

Submission + - Where to go with big ideas 2

Submitted by
rockwood
rockwood writes: "Looking for hope, I've decided to come to Slashdot; as the client base seem to be diverse enough to provide pro and cons in regards to "selling and idea/concept".
I have been researching and working on a concept that for all purposes the business model I put together for it not only compliments the current internet trends, but also fills a huge gap. A gap so large that I cannot understand why it has not been implemented before (something similar to what the first person who made the phonebook most likely felt like) "This idea is so obvious that everyone would use it, but why hasn't anyone done it before"
My dilemma is that with literally no additional funds to put toward a lawyer, patent/copyrights etc.. I'm fearful of mentioning it to anyone.
I've been sending correspondence to both Google and to News Corp; though proceeding cautiously as I'm afraid of someone stealing the idea; which would produce revenue on a global scale, internet users, mobile and pda, everyone would use it.

So my question — what resources are readily available to help someone in my situation protect themselves and also profit from this? I'd love to implement the idea and watch it grow, though my estimate bandwidth for usage would run 25k to 50k monthly (remember I can't even afford the lawyer at this point). But I'm also open to selling the idea outright — though I'd only be open to an offer that was of a substantial amount.
I've considered contacting my local S.C.O.R.E, though previous dealings with them didn't seem to provide the information and guidance I was hoping for — and again, I'm fearful that if they here something they like they could do it themselves. I know most of you might say "NDA", but I feel that isn't worth the paper it is on, a mere call and a tipoff to a friend 2000 miles away would be something I'd never be able to prove.

Just to bring things into light, I'm estimating initial investment of 4 to 10 million dollars with a return of approximately 5 to 15 million a month! — With that type of return investment you can see why I am leery of mentioning anything to anyone.

Suggestions?"
United States

Submission + - Full spectrum solar cells (lbl.gov) 1

Submitted by
Diego Manuel
Diego Manuel writes: "BERKELEY, CA — Researchers in the Materials Sciences Division (MSD) of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with crystal-growing teams at Cornell University and Japan's Ritsumeikan University, have learned that the band gap of the semiconductor indium nitride is not 2 electron volts (2 eV) as previously thought, but instead is a much lower 0.7 eV. The serendipitous discovery means that a single system of alloys incorporating indium, gallium, and nitrogen can convert virtually the full spectrum of sunlight — from the near infrared to the far ultraviolet — to electrical current"
The Internet

Submission + - Senate Majority Whip asking for advice online (openleft.com)

Submitted by
Sayhar
Sayhar writes: "Dick Durbin, Senate Majority Whip, put up a post online, asking American citizens, "What should be America's national broadband strategy?"

This is a pretty unique opportunity. He wants to accomplish these three goals: universal and affordable broadband, "preserving an online environment for innovation," and "broadband technology that enables more voices to be heard." What should the ideal bill contain?"
Businesses

Submission + - Ending the switching of names on utilities 2

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: So one of my roommates is moving out and he has three utilities under his name. I will be picking up these utilities but we have to pay an installation fee for some of the accounts or restart service for other accounts. This is frustrating since all we're doing is changing the name on the account. We started discussing various options since the house has an average rollover rate (1-2 people a year in a 4 person house) and paying the fees every time just gets to be a waste of money.

One of the options that was discussed was to create a fake business at our address and just change the "account manager" as needed for the business account. Unfortunately, none of us really know what would be required to establish this business or prove its existence.

So I ask two questions: 1) Is this a reasonable option? 2) If so, what would we need to do to prove the existence of our company? If not, what would be required for your proposed solution?
Enlightenment

Submission + - Rolling my own parental controls in Linux

Submitted by ZekeSMZ
ZekeSMZ writes: It's been a year since I made the switch from windows to Ubuntu, and I can safely say I'm never going back. One of the best things I've done is to set up an Edubuntu system for my kids — ages 4 and 2. With applications such as Supertux, TuxPaint, G Compris, Stellarium and even Kolf, they amuse themselves for hours with the machine and can't damage it like they can a Windows box.

Now that my 4 year old is learning to read and type, I'd like to set up some form of parental controls on my network. I consider myself a moderately competant Linux user, but I do not have anything approaching the skills of the talented sysadmins I've worked with over the years. So, I'd like to reach out to the Slashdot community for advice on how to lock down my network so that they won't accidentally bump into the seedier side of the web.

What are the best firewall apps to use for internal filtering? Do (or could) any of them support pro-active whitelisting, where I could get an email with a blocked URL that my kids tried to visit, and in response — I set up a rule to allow or deny access to the URL. This is a fairly mainstream feature of various parental control software out there, how could a similar solution be set up in Linux?

I'm going to assume that my kids are smarter than me and will one day figure out how to own the network. You get bonus points if you can give pointers on setting up a dual system, one that they can hack, and one that is running in the background in silent or stealth mode to monitor activity. My intent here is not to be big brother, but rather a responsible parent.
Networking

Submission + - Timewarner DNS Hijacking

Submitted by
Exstatica
Exstatica writes: "It looks like Timewarner is taking botnets into their own hands. They've hijacked dns for a few irc servers. The latests being irc.vel.net, irc.mzima.net, and irc.nac.net all part of EFNet. Using ns1.sd.cox.net the lookup returns an ip for what looks to be a script that forces the user into a channel and issues a set of commands to clean the drones. There have been different reports of other irc networks being hijacked and other dns servers involved. Is this the right way to handle this? Is hijacking DNS illegal?"

Belgium Chooses OpenDocument 77

Posted by timothy from the land-of-the-free-format dept.
Freggy writes "The Belgian government decided today that all public services should use open standard file formats for the exchange of office documents ( press release in Dutch, French). The reason is that they don't want to force people to have to buy a proprietary program to be able to read official documents. All federal public services should be able to read ODF files by September 2007. If no problems arise after a study, the use of the file format will be obligatory from September 2008."

Browsers Fighting to Keep up with the Web 542

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the competition-is-good-for-progress dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With the continued evolution of the internet and more tools being developed or migrated online browsers are fighting to keep up. Wired has a quick look at the current status of the browser war and what different browsers are doing to try to stay ahead. From the article: 'Already, IE has seen its U.S. market share on Windows computers drop to 90 percent from 97 percent two years ago, according to tracking by WebSideStory. Firefox's share has steadily increased to 9 percent, with Opera's negligible despite its innovations. WebSideStory analyst Geoff Johnston said Firefox must continue to improve just to maintain its share. Because IE automatically ships with Windows, he said, users satisfied with IE7 may not find enough reasons to download and install Firefox when they buy a new computer.'"

Missing Link Fossil Discovered 864

Posted by samzenpus from the intelligent-fossil-design dept.
choongiri writes "The Guardian is reporting the discovery of a missing link of evolution. From the article: "Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago.""

Two Legged Robot Sets Speed Record 149

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the see-bot-run-runbot-run dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers in Germany and Scotland have made the fastest two-legged robot yet (for its size) called RunBot. It is controlled by a simple program that mimics the way neurons control reflexes in humans and other animals. From the article: 'We wanted to show that a very simple system with a simple neuronal controller could walk in a natural manner - and fast,' says Florentin Wörgötter, from the University of Göttingen in Germany. The story also features couple of videos of RunBot in action."

Microsoft Accuses European Union of Collusion 265

Posted by Zonk from the can-a-billion-dollar-corp-be-paranoid dept.
GarbagePailKid wrote to mention the news that Microsoft has filed a formal complaint alleging that the EU colluded with company rivals and hid critical documents during the EU regulation hearings. According to Microsoft: "While the documents provided do not include the direct correspondence between the commission and its technical experts, they show that the commission, the trustee, and Microsoft's adversaries were secretly collaborating throughout the fall of 2005 in a manner inconsistent with the commission's role as neutral regulator and the Trustee's role as independent monitor..."

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