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The Courts

Lori Drew Trial Results In 3 Misdemeanor Convictions 568

Posted by timothy from the justice-or-not dept.
grassy_knoll writes "As a follow up to an earlier story, the Lori Drew 'cyber-bullying' trial has resulted in misdemeanor convictions." grassy_knoll quotes from the AP story as carried by Salon: "The Los Angeles federal court jury on Wednesday rejected felony charges of accessing a computer without authorization to inflict emotional distress on young Megan Meier. However, the jury found defendant Lori Drew guilty of three counts of the lesser offense of accessing a computer without authorization. The jurors could not reach a verdict on a conspiracy count. Prosecutors said Drew violated the MySpace terms of service by conspiring with her young daughter and a business assistant to create a fictitious profile of a teen boy on the MySpace social networking site to harass Megan. Megan, who had been treated for depression, hanged herself in 2006 after receiving a message saying the world would be better without her." Adds reader gillbates: "She now faces up to 3 years in jail and $300,000 in fines — a troubling precedent for anyone who has ever registered with a website under a pseudonym."
Google

Submission + - Google mobiles to make February debut? (apcmag.com)

Submitted by
SpinelessJelly
SpinelessJelly writes: "It appears that Google's Android, criticised by Microsoft as vaporware, has sprung to life. Prototype devices are circulating, software developers are experimenting with the SDK and PC-based Android emulator, and there are rumours of a show-stopping debut at February's Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. Numerous examples of the Android GUI are also starting to leak out."
United States

U.S. Attorney General Resigns 845

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.
willie3204 is one of many to mention that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned. One of Gonzales' main opponents praised his decision stating that: "'For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional and desperately needs new leadership,' said the Schumer statement. 'Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations. We beseech the Administration to work with us to nominate someone whom Democrats can support and America can be proud of.'"
Music

Submission + - Is wireless sound via A2DP any good? (bensite.net)

Submitted by
ben81
ben81 writes: "More and more mobile phones claim to be an alternative to old school MP3 players. But almost none of them offers a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. Available adapters (from Sony Ericsson for example) unnecessarily extend the headphone cord and are a clumsy solution. New MP3 phones however offer A2DP, a Bluetooth profile for sending stereo sound to headphones. Is this solution in any way reliable (connection stability) and is the sound quality in any way comparable to the one corded headphones deliver? Are there any recommendable phone/BT-headphone combos?"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - A surefire way to get funding for green IT project (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Green may be fashionable, but it's also a hard sell, unless you know this magic way to calculate ROI. As soon as you mention buying green gear to the company's purse holders, they'll ask how long until the project pays for itself. If you use typical ROI methods to answer, they'll tell you to go jump in a lake. (Sounds good, if your company's carbon footprint wasn't making the lake toxic.) The way to sell green projects is with a calculation called the "argument of avoided production." It shows that for every dollar saved on energy, your company can generate up to $100 less in revenues (or drop up to 10% to the bottom line). http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/080207-fundi ng-green-it-projects.html
Math

Winnie Wrote a Math Book 638

Posted by Zonk from the why-isn't-that-a-textbook dept.
SoyChemist writes "Hollywood is not known for providing a wealth of positive female role models. Danica McKellar, the actress that played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years and Elsie Snuffin on The West Wing, has written a math book for teenage girls. 'Math Doesn't Suck' is done in the style of a teen magazine. It even includes a horoscope, cute doodles of shoes and jewelry, and testimonials from attractive young career women that use math at work. It focuses on fractions and pre-algebra and uses mnemonics like calling a reciprocal a 'refliprocal', because you just take the fraction and flip it upside down. Wired interviewed McKellar about the new book and her crusade to eliminate the achievement gap between boys and girls in math courses. McKellar graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCLA. While studying there, she co-authored a proof and presented it at a conference. After she and Mayim Bialik — star of Blossom and a PhD in neuroscience — appeared in a 20/20 episode about intellectual actresses, several literary agents came knocking on her door."
Security

Submission + - Diebold Source Code Reviewed, Found Vunerable (pcworld.com)

Submitted by Shteven
Shteven writes: The state of California has managed to independently review Diebold's source code for vulnerabilities. From the article:

"The software contains serious design flaws that have led directly to specific vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to affect election outcomes," read the University of California at Berkeley report, commissioned by the California Secretary of State as part of a two-month "top-to-bottom" review of electronic voting systems certified for use in California. The assessment of Diebold's source code revealed an attacker needs only limited access to compromise an election.
The Courts

Submission + - Judge Rules Server RAM is Subject to Discovery (law.com)

Submitted by SomePoorSchmuck
SomePoorSchmuck writes: If you thought the torrent/P2P model of only providing indexing and not maintaining user data in nonvolatile memory kept your downloading activity relatively anonymous, think again. In a dogfight between popular site TorrentSpy and the MPAA, a federal judge has for the first time ruled that server RAM is subject to discovery by MPAA lawyers. The MPAA seeks records of TorrentSpy's server RAM to track the site's file transfer activity. TorrentSpy's attorney Ira Rothken explains that now "any company currently being sued — even before any liability has been found — could end up having to collect and turn over RAM data at great cost." Given its past strong-arm tactics, one can't help but wonder if obtaining RAM data is the MPAA's real goal, or simply increasing the power of the lawsuit as an administrative nightmare for the defendant.
The Internet

Submission + - Scoring Systems for credibility of cited sources?

Submitted by
adinb
adinb writes: "Does anyone know of any widely used scoring systems for evaluation of credibility of cited sources? While I've seen guides (like this one from cornell) or this wikipedia article, I haven't seen any standardized scoring systems that apply a numerical score to source credibility. I'm thinking of something as simple as +5 for a current, double-blind study published in a peer reviewed journal, funded by non-partisan sources to -5 for an out of date, non peer reviewed article from a partisan source. If there aren't any "simple" systems out there, is this something we should create to help with evaluation of content on the net and in our society?"
Space

Submission + - Gravity Probe B's gyros were not so perfect

Submitted by mknewman
mknewman writes: The Gravity Probe B team is reporting at http://einstein.stanford.edu/ the reason for two abberations in the data they collected over the 1 year space mission, specificly an unexpected time varying polhode (wobble) period of the gyros and trapped magnetic flux causing unexpected torques on the spherical gyros.

Both of these effects are aparently caused by the sputtering method of depositing the nobium coating on the spheres, which created two 'halves' of the spheres.

The niobium coatings on the rotors were sputtered on in a series of 64 stages, turning the rotor to a new position for each new coating. This process created a very uniform niobium coating on each rotor. However, it turns out that the final, 64th layer effectively created two large patches on the rotors, defined by its edge. In other words, the edge of the final coating essentially divides the rotor into two halves, each of which is, in fact, a large electrostatic patch at opposite poles of the rotor-the very situation that we had tested for pre-launch and had determined was "not going to be an issue."

Fortunately, they have worked out some geometric and algebraic methods to extract the effects of this imperfection from the data and are planning on releasing the final results of the project in December, hopefully to prove or disprove the 'Frame Dragging' predictions of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

Interesting to note that even with these imperfections the gyros will take from 7,000 to 2,6000 years to spin down, which is less than the originally predicted 50,000 years but still one heck of a long time!
Bug

Submission + - computer failures disrupt East Coast air traffic

Submitted by jcgam69
jcgam69 writes: A cascading computer failure in the nation's air-traffic control system caused severe flight delays and some cancellations along the East Coast yesterday. A computer system in Atlanta that processes pilots' flight plans and sends them to air-traffic controllers failed early yesterday, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere said. In response, the agency rerouted the system's functions to another computer in Salt Lake City, which overloaded under the increased volume of data, magnifying the problem.
The Internet

Submission + - AT&T : the new Death star 3.0

Submitted by
palewook
palewook writes: "First, Frontline detailed AT&T's co-operation with the NSA's domestic data logging program in Spying On The Home Front. Now, AT&T has decided to work on implementing a deep data packet inspection program of their own. After all, the NSA already logs AT&T network data to keep you safe, why not deploy technology to keep you safe from pirated content on AT&T's network. AT&T claims they will not violate user privacy or FCC directives. James W. Cicconi, an AT&T senior vice president, started working last week with the MPAA and the RIAA to develop anti-piracy technology. The old AT&T death star logo joke appears relevant again."

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