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Idle

Sound As the New Illegal Narcotic? 561

Posted by samzenpus from the you-ever-see-the-back-of-a-$20-bill-on-sound? dept.
ehrichweiss writes "The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics is warning parents and teachers of a new threat to our children: sounds. Apparently kids are now discovering binaural beats and using them to get 'physiological effects.' The report goes on with everyone suggesting that such aural experiences will act as a gateway to drug usage and even has one student claiming there are 'demons' involved. Anyone who has used one of those light/sound machines knows all about the effects that these sounds will give and to state that they will lead kids to do drugs is nonsense at best. It seems the trend in scaring the citizens with a made-up problem has gone to the next level."
Image

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Internet 92

Posted by samzenpus from the vicky-who? dept.
MMBK writes "Our friends at JESS3 have unveiled The Ex-Blocker. It's a Firefox and Chrome plugin that erases all name and likeness of your ex from the Internet, even if they become a meme, or the president. You'll no longer have to threaten to delete your Facebook account or concoct an elaborate e-hoax to assuage the reality-shattering complications that are born from break-ups. Simply construct an Internet that omits bad vibes all together."
Java

Submission + - Sun Pushes Emergency Java Patch (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: In a sudden about-face, Sun has rushed out a Java update to fix a drive-by download vulnerability that exposed Windows users to in-the-wild malware attacks.The patch comes less than a week after Sun told a Google researcher it did not consider the issue serious enough to warrant an out-of-cycle patch and less than a day after researchers spotted live exploits on a booby-trapped Web site. The flaw, which was also discovered independently by Ruben Santamarta, occurs because the Java-Plugin Browser is running “javaws.exe” without validating command-line parameters. Despite the absence of documentation, a researcher was about to figure out that Sun removed the code to run javaws.exe from the Java plugin. The about-face by Sun is another sign that some big vendors still struggle to understand the importance of working closely with white hat researchers to understand the implications of certain vulnerabilities. In this case, Google’s Tavis Ormandy was forced to use the full-disclosure weapon to force the vendor into a proper response.
Idle

Submission + - Need to fix a grade, a 3'rd grader can help 1

Submitted by Gud
Gud writes: In the Washington Post this morning there is a story about a 9 year old that was able to do anything he wanted to grades in his school in a system supplied by Blackboard.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/14/AR2010041404159.html?hpid=newswell

This comes on the heals of an other story about high-school students installing key loggers at their high school and going back and changing grades.

The question now is when will all the applicants to Harward submit transcripts that only have A's ?
Privacy

Submission + - Young Adults Care About Privacy (ssrn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to the Associated Press, a new joint UC-Berkeley/U.Penn study finds that young people, contrary to media reports, do care about privacy online:

Although they grew up in the digital age, young people know surprisingly little about their rights to online privacy, the study found. They seem more confident than older adults that the government would protect them, even though U.S. privacy laws offer few such safeguards. The lack of knowledge about the law, coupled with an online environment that encourages people to share personal information, may be one reason young people can seem careless about privacy...

Submission + - Iceland Volcano Ash Grounds European Air Travel (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by Ch_Omega
Ch_Omega writes: From the article at CBSNews:
"An ash-spewing volcano in Iceland emptied the skies of aircraft across much of northern Europe on Thursday, grounding planes on a scale unseen since the 9/11 terror attacks. British air space shut down, silencing the trans-Atlantic hub of Heathrow and stranding tens of thousands of passengers around the world.

Aviation officials said it was not clear when it would be safe enough to fly again and said it was the first time in living memory that an ash cloud had brought one of the world's most congested airspaces to a standstill. "

BBC News, Deccan Herald and Barents Observer has more coverage.

Submission + - NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Whistleblower Indicted (wired.com) 1

Submitted by elrous0
elrous0 writes: Thomas Andrews Drake, a former NSA official, was charged Thursday in the U.S. District Court of Maryland with allegedly leaking classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents to an unnamed reporter during his time with the agency. It is widely believed that Drake was one of the unnamed whistleblowers who revealed the NSA's secret (and illegal) warrantless wiretapping program to New York Times reporters in 2005 (along with Justice Department lawyer Thomas Tamm). “Our national security demands that the sort of conduct alleged here — violating the government’s trust by illegally retaining and disclosing classified information — be prosecuted and prosecuted vigorously,” said Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer in a statement.

Comment Re:Vendor promises (Score 1) 190

by Gud (#30730206) Attached to: Asus Promises 12-Hour Battery Life In New High-End Laptop

I have ASUS UL80VT and have had it for over a month, it promised 10 hours, I have used in the office whole
day without charging, that is email, web, coding, jabber, and meetings using WiFi, my guess is I used the
computer for about 6 hours, and 3 hours standing idle/sleeping and there was still some juice left and I got
2 hours at home out of the same charge, that is close enough to 10 hours for me, this was in power saver mode.
I like the switching between the two graphics chips, works like a charm, for most applications there is no
need for the fast one.
I have got about 5 hours of game playing in on battery with the fast graphics on.
My only issue with the machine is that I do not care for the "mouse" buttons, but a USB mouse
solved that problem when lots of clicking is needed.

In short I like this machine a lot and highly recommend it.
PlayStation (Games)

US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144

Posted by Soulskill from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.
bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."
Role Playing (Games)

Eve Online's New Chief Economist 52

Posted by Zonk from the getting-serious-about-serious-money dept.
eldavojohn writes "Recently CCP, the folks behind the online game Eve Online, hired a real world economist to advise them on their in-game economy. Says the new hire, Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, 'There's a lot of discussion in the game about inflation and that is my job, to find out if inflation is going on. This makes the consumers behave in a more natural way because they are competing against each other on multiple levels, not only on a tactical level in combat but for logistics and resources. That builds consumer behavior and patterns that you see in the real world.' Is this a serious step to keep Eve Online competitive in the virtual land of MMOs despite scandals, Ponzi schemes & scams?"

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