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Comment Re:guilty eh? (Score 1) 964

by Jeremiah Stoddard (#35933028) Attached to: Bizarre Porn Raid Underscores Wi-Fi Privacy Risks

Either way, when the police look at your computer and find no traces of illegal activity, they'll let you go, just like they did with the guy in the story.

I wish I had your confidence that the police are always good enough to do that. It must be quite pleasant to be able to ignore all the news reports of police misconduct...

Comment Re:Easy (Score 1) 195

by Jeremiah Stoddard (#21414609) Attached to: The Fine Line Between Security and Usability
Why should I pay more for what any reasonable person ought to be able to expect? If I pay for something, it's my right to expect a functional and safe product in return. Hell, Free/Open Source software gives me that for free, and yet some profit-making enterprise can't afford to do it?

And it doesn't cost the vendor anything more to release the source of an outdated piece of software -- they don't have to use an open source license, just allow me to fix what I paid for.
Music

Submission + - Virgin Digital To Close - DRM Strikes Back Again (last100.com)

Submitted by mrspin
mrspin writes: It's a gamble we all take when we sign up for a digital music service: Will it still be around in a year or two? The latest digital music store to go belly up is Virgin Digital, which its owner, Virgin, is in the process of shutting down in the US and UK. Once the store goes dark Oct. 19, customers will not be able to play the music they've bought, due to digital rights management (DRM) limitations.
Google

Submission + - Google sued for $5b for crimes against humanity (theregister.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "A Pennsylvania crusader has slapped Google with a $5bn lawsuit, claiming that the world's largest search engine is endangering his personal safety.

With a suit filed in federal court, Dylan Stephen Jayne insists that the company is guilty of "crimes against humanity" because its name turns up when his social security number is scrambled and turned upside down.

By calling itself Google, Jayne argues, Google has exposed him to attack by an army of culturally diverse, net-savvy terrorists. "A person regardless of race or religion that wishes to cause acts of terrorism would look for social security numbers that are made readily available on the public use databases," his suit reads.

And he's adamant that if Google claims ignorance, many people could end up dead or buck naked. "The 'I don't know' defense obviously is a waste of money, time, and puts the lives of Americans and illegal aliens at risk of death or serious undress.""

SwarmOS Demonstrated at Idea Festival 142

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the welcoming-various-overlords dept.
PacoCheezdom writes "Intelligent Life has short summary of a demonstration by MIT professor James McLurkin of his new group-minded robots, which run an operating system called 'Swarm OS'. The robots are able to work together as a group not by communicating with all members of the group at once, but by talking only to their neighbors, and model other similar behaviors performed by bees and ants. "
Power

Submission + - Salt Water can "Burn," Scientist Confirms (nationalgeographic.com) 2

Submitted by Fantastic Lad
Fantastic Lad writes: Salt water can indeed burn when exposed to a certain kind of radio wave, a university chemist has confirmed. "Rustum Roy of Pennsylvania State University verified earlier this month that the radio waves break the water into its components, allowing the resulting freed hydrogen and oxygen to catch fire. Independent scientists said the phenomenon is credible as explained, though practical applications of the technology remain uncertain." — I guess if this has been reported in such a reputable journal as National Geographic, then the powers that be have rigorously confirmed that burning water poses no threat to the oil companies. Two weeks prior, (when I first submitted this news), the discovery was being carefully ignored by the main stream. Ha ha.
Music

Submission + - Universal Music challenges legality of free stream (french-law.net)

Submitted by njondet
njondet writes: The claim by Deezer.com, a free on-demand music streaming website, that it had become the first legal service of its kind thanks to a royalty payment deal with a French society representing artists ( see report in Slashdot ), has been challenged by Universal Music . The record label has denounced as illegal the use by Deezer of songs from its music catalogue and has asked for their removal from the website. In doing so, the label want to reassert its copyrights but maybe also to protect a new music venture with a French ISP under which customers of the ISP are offered unlimited downloads to Universal's music.
Security

Submission + - PC vendor sells laptops with 13 year-old virus

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: German PC vendor Medion gave some of its customers an unwanted blast from the past when it shipped laptops loaded with a 13 year-old virus. The Medion systems contained a boot virus known as Stoned.Angelina. The virus stores itself in the DOS boot sector of floppy disks and in the master boot record on hard disks.

The company said in a notice on its Danish website that the infected machines had been sold through Aldi retail stores in the country.
Software

Submission + - Dutch government embraces ODF (tweakers.net)

Submitted by Tectuktitlay
Tectuktitlay writes: The Dutch government is planning to embrace ODF! The article is in Dutch, but I've translated it for you: ODF in common acceptance in Dutch civil service next year

By Olaf von Miltenburg, sunday 16 september 2007
Source: Volskrant

The Dutch civil service should make more use of open standard and open source software, says a bill recently approved by the government. For example, ODF ought to be in common usage by april next year.

Using more free software is expected to reduce the administration's depency on powerful software houses such as Microsoft, which in turn should reduce cost. Furthermore, it ought to open up opportunities for young, innovative companies, according to the action plan "Nederland Open in Verbinding" ("The Netherlands Open and Connected"). The bill will be submitted to the parliament this monday.

First on the to-do-list is the common acceptance of ODF, but other open standards and open source software ought to follow. If state departments won't employ free software, they would have to bring valid reasons to bear, says deputy minister Frank Heemskerk.

Furthermore, the NMA (Competition Authority) will look into the software market at the request of the government to ascertain whether there is enough competition. The CPB (Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis) has been ordered to investigate which parties can profit from the use of free software. Depending on the outcome more measures will be added to the current plans. Now that ODF carries the ISO-stamp, governments all over the world are considering using the format. The Belgian federal government, for example, embraced ODF as early as june last year as the default for their documents.
The Courts

Submission + - Has RIAA Abandoned "Making Available"?

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA's standard complaint (pdf) was thrown out last month by a federal judge in California as so much "conclusory" "boilerplate" "speculation" in Interscope v. Rodriguez. Interestingly, the RIAA's amended complaint (pdf), filed six (6) days later, abandoned altogether the RIAA's "making available" argument, which it first formulated in defending the dismissal motion in Elektra v. Barker. This raises a number of questions, including (a) whether the RIAA is going to stick to this new form of complaint in future cases, (b) whether it is going to get into a different kind of trouble for some of its new allegations, such as its contention that the investigator "detected an individual" (contradicting the testimony of the RIAA's own expert witness) and the allegation that the defendant should be held liable because he or she is "the individual responsible for that IP address at that date and time", a phrase which would appear to be meaningless in a copyright infringement context, and (c) what tack defendants' lawyers should take (this was one lawyer's suggestion)."
Handhelds

Submission + - Apple and the RIAA, ringtones

Submitted by pilsner.urquell
pilsner.urquell writes: Apples own interests to defend the rights of consumer has cost them a lot of grief in the ringtone market.

Ask Not For Whom the Ring Tones.
Writing about Apples iTunes ringtones, John Gruber of the Daring Fireball cited Engadget, which reported that the RIAA wanted to be able to distribute ringtones of its artists without having to pay them big money to do so (surprised?), and it won a decision last year before the Copyright Office saying that ringtones werent derivative works, meaning they didnt infringe on the copyright of the songwriter.
Just a continuation of just how evil that RIAA really is.
Privacy

Submission + - Canadian Gov't Seeks New ISP Snooping Powers

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Michael Geist is reporting that the Canadian government has launched a private consultation on new rules that would require Internet service providers to hand over a wide range of subscriber information without a court order. The new rules would cover cell phone data, email addresses, and IP addresses. The government has not made the consultation public nor identified who it is consulting.
Microsoft

Submission + - Only Novell can (legally) distribute moonlight. 1

Submitted by vexorian
vexorian writes: Although moonlight is said to be an open source project, but there's more than meets the eye. In reply to a blog by Matt Asay, Bruce Lowry of Novell's PR team issued a clarification

"You state in this piece that the only Linux Silverlight will run on is SUSE Linux Enterprise" ... "It's true that, under the terms of our agreements with Microsoft, only SUSE Linux Enterprise will be able to bundle Moonlight into the distribution. However, users of other distributions will be able to run Silverlight on those distributions, if they so desire."
Windows

Submission + - Black screen of darkness to haunt Vista pirates (computerworld.com)

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: Microsoft's Reduced Functionality mode was explained in an email to OEMs as the consequence of Vista piracy. It includes a black screen after 1 hour of browsing, no start menu or task bar, and no desktop. Using fear as a motivator, the email warns resellers to 'make sure your customers always get genuine Windows Vista preinstalled.'

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