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Comment We are so screwed. Maybe it's time to do something (Score 1) 339

The CIA wants to make the personal information of everyone public. At least that's what I get from a previous article and this one.

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/11/204231

It's time for Ron Paul. Cause none of the others are going to do a dang thing about it.

It hurt watching this:
http://ivorytowerz.blogspot.com/2007/11/wolf-blitzer-is-human-rights-more.html

Feed Denied Entrance Into The US Thanks To A Google Search Of Your Permanent Record (techdirt.com)

For a long time, people have talked about how Google has effectively created the infamous "permanent record" teachers always warned us about in school. And, now, it appears that it's not just being used for background checks on dates and job reference checks, but for official government purposes as well. Joe McEnaney writes in to alert us to a story of a Canadian man who was denied entrance to the US after border guards did a Google search on his name and discovered a peer-reviewed academic paper he'd written years earlier that mentioned his own LSD use over 30 years ago. Setting aside any thoughts one way or the other on whether or not that should be a criteria for entering the US, just think of what this means for teens today who are discussing their lives very publicly on sites like MySpace. We've already wondered what will happen once the MySpace generation runs for office, but right now they might just want to be careful leaving and entering the country.
Programming

Submission + - How do you select a software license?

indraneil writes: "I am a code monkey and have been so for close to 5 years now. I have recently been doing some self-started work that lets me design, implement and test stuff all by myself. A couple of people have liked my prototype and wanted to use it.
I would be happy to let others use it, but I am unsure of what license to release it under. My CS course did not include any awareness of licensing and while I am aware of GPL, LGPL, Apache, BSD and Creative Commons licenses, I never got around to understanding them fully to be able to form an opinion on what suits me best. I notice that sourceforge also expects me to specify my licensing choice, while I am setting up my project.
So my question is:
If a person who does not know licensing, where does (s)he start to begin to be able to get a clearer picture of the same?"
Privacy

Submission + - Blizzard Seeks to Block User Rights, Privacy

An anonymous reader writes: In the overlooked case between Blizzard and MDY Industries, the creator of the WoWGlider bot, Blizzard is arguing that using any programs in conjunction with the World of Warcraft constitutes copyright violation. Apparently accessing the copy of the game client in RAM using another program infringes upon their rights. Under that logic, users do not even have the right to use anti-virus software in the event that the game becomes infected. Furthermore, Blizzard's legal filings downplay the role of their Warden software, which actively scans users' RAM, CPU, and storage devices (and potentially sensitive data) and sends information back to Blizzard to be processed. Both sides have a good case, and it will be interesting to see how this one resolves.
Software

Submission + - Software Calculator?

An anonymous reader writes: There are simple software calculators like the calc.exe and Abakus and there are more complex/expensive alternatives like matlab and Mathematica. I'm looking for a more friendly and/or more useful software calculator. Not too particular about software licenses or cost, i'm just looking for alternatives. What would you recommend for graphical or text based software calculator?
Programming

People Don't Hate to Make Desktop Apps, Do They? 233

Annie Peterson writes "Paul Graham has been making the argument that desktop development is dead — That's his premise for declaring Microsoft dead as well, and he claims that no one out there likes to develop for the desktop anymore. But that's not true, or is it? Desktop development is easier, faster, more productive, and infinitely more enjoyable — right? The question is, since web apps were originally built on desktop applications themselves, have the tables flipped? Or is it just wishful thinking?"
The Media

Submission + - Update: Colorado woman claims hackers killed site

An anonymous reader writes: Colorado Woman's site taken down... claimed "stolen by hackers"

Colorado Woman Suzanne Shell runs "profane-justice". The site was slashdoted between March 19th 2007, and March 31st, 2007. Information Week reported a legal dispute between Susan Shell and Archive.org, where in spite of a lack of a robots.txt file, it was her belief that her rights were violated by archive crawlers.

The site was shutdown due to exceeding the monthly bandwidth allotment late March 19th, 2007 according EarthLink's error message. It's now Suzanne's contention that "On or about March 18-20, 2007,""this site was maliciously hacked""and sent out all over the world as hot-linked spam pop-ups or some""other similar abusive theft of""bandwidth and content." {quoted from here} and is claiming more than $276,050.00 in damages based on $.01/page and $.02/MB in stolen revenue. Her site claims over 36 million page loads since March 17, 2007.

Is this a case of an online vigilante took it upon themselves to hack the site and spam the world in a period of two days, or is this a case where getting publicity created an interest in her site and it was this interest that exceded her bandwidth allocation? Is it reasonable to claim $276,050.00 for 11 days of down time, or should Suzanne Shell have contacted her ISP and increase her monthly bandwidth allocation? Were hackers/unsolicited pop-ups/spam involved?

It's asked by Suzanne Shell that anyone who received the url to her site by "virtue of unsolicited pop-up, spam, email or any other mechanism" to contact the "FBI Computer Crime center (www.ic3.gov)" case I0703201751051092.
Spam

Submission + - Symantec: porn spam hits all time low

thefickler writes: Bad news for anyone looking for help with erection problems. Pornographic spam dropped to an all-time low (as a percentage of overall spam) in February, according to a report from vendor Symantec Corporation. Pornographic spam comprised just 3 percent of the total amount of spam last month. This included pornography, personal advertisements and relationship advice, as well as other messages containing or referring to products or services for people over the age of 18.
Security

Submission + - Some WHOIS servers has been hacked

yohanes writes: "It seems a WHOIS server (crsnic.net) belonging to Verisign has been hacked (may be not just one, I can't confirm the others). Try doing whois google.com or whois microsoft.com on your console, and see what happens. If you miss it, you can see my archive at http://tinyhack.com. Please verify this story, as I have tested on three machines on different parts of the world."
Music

Submission + - Students busted on piracy charges

taoman1 writes: The music industry is asking 50 Ohio University students to pay $3,000 each to avoid lawsuits accusing them of pirating songs off the Internet. The Recording Industry Association of America asked the university to pass along letters to the students with Internet addresses accused of being involved with the illegal sharing of copyrighted music. The university notified the students on Monday. "The downloading has occurred and we can't change that, but we can let them know what their options are," OU spokeswoman Sally Linder said Wednesday.

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