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Comment Re:Chinese cell phones (Score 2, Insightful) 173

Most likely because China could care less. Contrary to the image China projects about being best friends with North Korea, they are pretty much as sick as NK as the rest of the world. China has lost billions in investments to NK, and if you've ever lent $20 to someone and never had it paid back, you can begin to imagine how they feel. That being said, China does actively enforce the border, but there is a myriad of different political reasons for this. The "legal" reason is that they have pacts with North Korea in relation to this issue (hence why escaping NK aren't granted refugee status by China). Some of the other reasons include the fact that many Chinese citizens are just as paranoid about North Koreans coming across and taking Chinese jobs as Americans are about Mexico. Others have already replied to your thread and also pointed out that other reasons may include China have an equal investment in getting information out. China probably isn't interested in the trade aspect so much, as it's entirely black market and therefore next to impossible to regulate. Unfortunately I don't have an direct citations to back up the above, but I am basing most of my information off of "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea" by Barbara Demick. It's an excellent read. Most people try and draw parallels to first world countries with 1984, but the sad truth is North Korea could be considered source material.

Comment Just how does this exploit work? (Score 1) 226

I've been at work every time I've seen an article come up about the jailbreak, so I haven't had time to go digging for details (including the links off this article; I don't want to push my work's internet filter). Does anyone have an explanation as to how this jailbreak actually works? Every article I've seen doesn't go into the details other than saying it's a magic USB dongle you plug in. Can Sony even patch this hole?
Music

Brian Eno Releases Second iPhone App 196

Brian Eno, or as he is known to many in my office, "God," has released his second iPhone App. A followup to Bloom, this one is called Trope and supposedly creates darker music. You create music by drawing shapes on the iPhone's screen.

Comment Re:Not reported != not happening (Score 0) 369

they told her they'd replaced the battery and weren't charging her anything for it

Which Battery? It's my understanding that Hybrids still have a traditional 12 volt battery for the car's regular electrical systems. When I was looking at getting a Hybrid a few years back (ultimately did not end up getting one) I, like the grandparent, was unable to find any actual battery replacement stories (sans one story about a car that had a bad cell in it's pack).

NASA

Submission + - Space Shuttle Secrets Stolen for China

Ponca City, We Love You writes: "The Department of Justice has announced the indictment of former Boeing engineer Dongfan Chung on charges of economic espionage in the theft of company trade secrets relating to the Space Shuttle, the C-17 military transport aircraft and the Delta IV rocket. Chung is a native of China and a naturalized U.S. citizen who stole secrets on behalf of China, the indictment says. According to the indictment, Chinese aviation industry representatives began sending Chung 'tasking' letters as early as 1979. Over the years, the letters directed Chung to collect specific technological information, including data related to the Space Shuttle and various military and civilian aircraft. Chung allegedly responded in one letter indicating a desire to contribute to the 'motherland,' the DOJ said. It was not immediately clear how much, if any, damage the alleged espionage did to U.S. national security but DOJ officials said the cases reflect the determination of China's government to penetrate U.S. intelligence and obtain vital national defense secrets. "Today's prosecution demonstrates that foreign spying remains a serious threat in the post-Cold War world,'' said Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security"
Music

Submission + - Vista's changes rob Creative of PC audio crown 4

Dr. Damage writes: Creative has ruled PC sound almost since the beginning, but Vista's new audio layer changes the game by essentially killing off 3D positional audio acceleration. The Tech Report has reviewed a pair of post-Vista sound cards, with surprising results. Motherboard maker Asus saw the opening and created perhaps the best consumer-level sound card yet, the Xonar D2X, with quality components, an EMI shield, color-illuminated ports, the best objective measurements and subjective listening test scores we've ever seen, and (finally!) a PCI Express x1 connector. Could the Sound Blaster era finally be over?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Patents Frustration-Detection System (arstechnica.com)

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Microsoft has patented a frustration-detection help system that would monitor your computer use and biometrics like your heart rate to figure out when you were frustrated. It could then offer to pair you up with someone else doing exactly the same thing who might be able to help you out. Interestingly, they don't appear to use speech recognition to detect abnormal levels of swear words, but that could be due to their past difficulties with speech recognition."
It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Poll: Favourite Slashdot Poll?

SurturZ writes: I think you should have a poll "Best Slashdot Poll?" * What would you like the CIA to declassify? * Best Meme in Slashdot's First 10 Years * Favorite Sci-Fi Ship? * Favourite Poll involving CowboyNeal? etc etc I'm sure you could do a database search to work out the top five most voted for polls to put in the list
Windows

Submission + - SPAM: Microsoft wins patent suit over XP boot-up tech 1

alphadogg writes: Microsoft defeated a major patent licensing firm in a lawsuit over technology that helps computers boot up faster Thursday. The suit asked the court to award the patent holder $2.50 per copy of Windows XP sold in the U.S. By Microsoft's account, that could have amounted to $600 million to $900 million. Microsoft argued that there are many ways to improve the boot speed of PCs and that XP uses different technology than that in the patent.
Link to Original Source
Announcements

Submission + - High-quality YouTube videos coming soon (webware.com)

mlauzon writes: "YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, speaking at the NewTeeVee Live conference today, confirmed that high-quality YouTube video streams are coming soon. Although YouTube's goal, he said, is to make the site's vast library of content available to everyone, and that requires a fairly low-bitrate stream, the service is testing a player that detects the speed of the viewer's Net connection and serves up higher-quality video if viewers want it.

Why wouldn't they? Because the need to buffer the video before it starts playing will change the experience. Hence the experiment, rather than just a rapid rollout of this technology. On stage, he said the current resolution of YouTube videos has been "good enough" for the site untill now.

Chen told me he expects that high-quality YouTube videos will be available to everyone within three months.

Chen also confirmed that in YouTube's internal archive, all video is stored at the native resolution in which it was sent. However, he said, a large portion of YouTube videos are pretty poor quality to begin with — 320x240. Streaming them in high-quality mode isn't going to help much."

Comment Re:that's awesome (Score 1) 506

Admiral William D. Leahy - "This is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives." said to president Harry S. Truman, after Vannevar Bush explained how the atomic bomb worked. One man's opinion, no matter how high in rank, does not make him right.
Media

Submission + - Major League Baseball wipes out DRM licenses 1

cuban321 writes:
Major League Baseball has switched DRM providers, forcing customers who bought videos from their old system to buy them again if they want to continue watching them. From one of its victims, sportswriter Allan Wood: "MLB no longer supports the DDS system that it once used and so any CDs with downloaded games on them 'are no good. They will not work with the current system.' ...I was told there is absolutely nothing MLB can do about these lost games. Plus, they said my purchases were all 'one-time sale' and thus 'there are no refunds.'"
Security

Submission + - Zero day Macrovision DRM exploit (yahoo.com)

LWATCDR writes: It is as simple as this. A piece of software that's only purpose is DRM/copy protection makes Windows XP and Windows Server vulnerable to a complete system take over. The name of the product is called SafeDisc. One has to wonder if it is from the author of Quickprotect of Dillbert fame?
From Yahoo news http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20071105/tc_zd/218871
"The vulnerability is in the Macrovision secdrv.sys driver on supported editions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. The affected product is Macrovision SafeDisc, a copy-protection application written for Windows.
FrSRT reported on Oct. 19 that the trouble is a memory corruption error in the Macrovision Security Driver when processing user-supplied data. The vulnerability can be used by local attackers to gain so-called Ring 0 privileges and take complete control of an affected system."

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