Comment Re:Sad... (Score 1) 89
Someone should alert the local police in Eau Claire, WI that this asshole is impersonating Michael Kristopeit on the internet and trying to get slashdotters to come to poor Michael's house.
Playstation 3 Code Signing Cracked For Good 534
ReportedlyWorking writes "It appears that Sony's PS3 has been fatally compromised. At the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, a team named 'fail0verflow' revealed that they had calculated the Private Keys, which would let them or anyone else generate signed software for the PS3. Additionally, they also claim to have a method of jailbreaking the PS3 without the use of a Dongle, which is the current method. If all these statements are true, this opens the door to custom firmware, and homebrew software. Assuming that Sony doesn't take radical action and invalidate their private keys, this could mean that Jailbreaking is viable on all PS3, regardless of their firmware! From the article: 'Approximately a half hour in, the team revealed their new PS3 secrets, the moment we all were waiting for. One of the major highlights here was, dongle-less jailbreaking by overflowing the bootup NOR flash, giving complete control over the system. The other major feat, was calculating the public private keys (due to botched security), giving users the ability to sign their own SELFs. Following this, the team declared Sony's security to be EPIC FAIL!'"
Auditors Question TSA's Tech Spending, Security Solutions 239
Frosty P writes "Government auditors have faulted the TSA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, for failing to properly test and evaluate technology before spending money on it. The TSA spent about $36 million on devices that puffed air on travelers to 'sniff' them out for explosives residue. All 207 of those machines ended up in warehouses, abandoned as unable to perform as advertised, deployed in many airports before the TSA had fully tested them. Since it was founded in 2001, the TSA has spent roughly $14 billion in more than 20,900 transactions with dozens of contractors, including $8 billion for the famous new body scanners that have recently come under scrutiny for being unable to perform the task for which they are advertised. 'TSA has an obsession of finding a single box that will solve all its problems. They've spent and wasted money looking for that one box, and there is no such solution,' said John Huey, an airport security expert."
Comment Re:Developer's Choice (Score 1) 196
You do not have to renew your contract but you do pay the same price (except Tmo) and if you switch carriers you appear to have to pay the same fees.
No. You might pay an activation fee to the new carrier ($30 or so), but you won't pay an early termination fee (usually $150 or more) to the old carrier. That's the main (only?) advantage of being out of the contract.
Comment Same here (Score 1) 421
I'm not chopping up by debit MasterCard since it's also my ATM card, but I have moved all my automated payments to Amex and will no longer be using MasterCard for any purchases. (As a bonus, Amex also has much better cash back rewards.)
I'm also emailing several relevant addresses the following letter:
To whom it may concern:
I was disappointed when I heard that MasterCard had cut off payments to WikiLeaks (as reported at http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20024776-281.html), claiming it is participating in "illegal activity" even though WikiLeaks hasn't been charged or convicted of anything, and even though WikiLeaks's actions have been substantially no different than those of the New York Times, the Guardian, and other news sites that distributed the same material.
Now I see that MasterCard is also siding with the music and movie cartels in their war on technology (http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20025879-261.html), cutting off payments to web sites accused of file sharing, and lending support to the so-called "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" which would grant the government the power to censor web sites without a trial.
It seems that every time I swipe my MasterCard, I'm funding an assault on freedom of speech.
December 19, 2010, was the last time I used my MasterCard -- and it will be the last time I use *any* MasterCard, or Cirrus, or Maestro, or anything related. In fact, I almost want to boycott Audi and the Olympics just for having similar logos.
I have three other charge networks to choose from, not to mention online payment systems and EFT. Comparing MasterCard to those, I see no advantages and two huge downsides. Goodbye.
Comment Re:How do I dumped ROM? (Score 1) 202
Now that Retrode is sold out, how would you recommend making ROM files from one's cartridges?
I would recommend not making your own ROM files. Whatever cartridges you have, someone else has already ripped them and put them online, so just download them. You'll end up with exactly the same files as if you'd done it yourself, so there are no moral or ethical arguments to be made against it, and the legal risk is infinitesimal.
WikiLeaks App Removed From Apple Store 338
Stoobalou writes "An 'unofficial' WikiLeaks App which contained published documents from the Cablegate leaks has been withdrawn from the Apple App Store.The $1.99 App created by developer Igor Barinov has been removed from sale without explanation despite the fact that all of the information contained in it is publicly available."
DHS Seized Domains Based On Bad Evidence 235
An anonymous reader writes "Back over Thanksgiving, the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit (ICE) made a lot of news by seizing over 80 domain names. While many of these involved sites that sold counterfeit products, five of the domains involved copyright issues. Four of them involved hiphop-related blogs — including ones that hiphop stars like Kanye West and others used to promote their own works, and the last one was a meta search engine that simply aggregated other search engines. Weeks went by without the owners of those sites even being told why their domains were seized, but the affidavit for the seizure of those five sites has recently come out, and it's full of all sorts of problems. Not only was it put together by a recent college graduate, who claimed that merely linking to news and blog posts about file sharing constituted evidence of copyright infringement, it listed as evidence of infringement songs that labels specifically sent these blogs to promote. Also, what becomes clear is that the MPAA was instrumental in 'guiding' ICE's rookie agent in going after these sites, as that appeared to be the only outside expertise relied on in determining if these sites should be seized."
Republicans Create Rider To Stop Net Neutrality 528
99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes
"Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) submitted a rider yesterday to a bill on military and veterans' construction projects. The rider would, 'prohibit the FCC from using any appropriated funds to adopt, implement or otherwise litigate any network neutrality based rules, protocols or standards.' It is co-signed by six other Republican senators. We all knew this was coming after the last election removed most of the vocal supporters of net neutrality and supplanted them with pro-corporate Republicans."
Oracle Releases MySQL 5.5 263
darthcamaro writes "Two years after Sun released MySQL 5.1, Oracle has picked up the ball with the official release of MySQL 5.5. New features include semi-synchronous replication, InnoDB by default and new SIGNAL/RESIGNAL support for exception handling. Above all, Oracle stressed that they are committed to further MySQL open source development and that they see it as a complementary technology to their proprietary Oracle database."
Pentagon Papers Ellsberg Supports Wikileaks 464
wierd_w writes "Daniel Ellsberg says: 'Every attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.' Due to the recent debates over the pros and cons between the wikileaks releases and those of the historic 'Pentagon papers,' Daniel Ellsberg, who released the pentagon papers in 1971, has written an editorial on the subject declaring that he rejects the mantra of 'Pentagon Papers good; WikiLeaks material bad,' and that further 'That's just a cover for people who don't want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that every attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.'"
Racy Danish Tabloid May Sue Apple For App Rejection 319
the_arrow writes "In Denmark the tabloid newspaper Ekstra Bladet usually have scantily clad ladies on page 9. When making an iPad application, Apple of course rejected it because of that. However, Ekstra Bladet is not happy with that, and many sites report that Ekstra Bladet is thinking about taking Apple to European court for 'unfair censorship and anti-competitive behaviour.'"
Google Unveils Android 'Honeycomb' Tablet 187
adeelarshad82 writes "Google Mobile Platform VP Andy Rubin unveiled the very first Android 'Honeycomb' tablet. While very few specs were released about the device, it is said to be a sleek, black, Motorola tablet that is roughly 10" and runs a NVidia dual core CPU. The device has a very clean homepage and the app page looked almost Apple iPad-like. In fact, the Gmail app looked almost exactly like Gmail on the iPad. According to Andy Rubin, Honeycomb should release some time next year, and most major OEMs planning on building Android tablets have expressed interest in using this version of the Android platform."
Using the Web To Turn Kids Into Autodidacts 230
theodp writes "Autodidacticism — self-education or self-directed learning — is nothing new, but the Internet holds the promise of taking it to the masses. Sugata Mitra, an Indian physicist whose earlier educational experiments inspired the film Slumdog Millionaire, is convinced that, with the Internet, kids can learn by themselves so long as they are in small groups and have well-posed questions to answer. And now, Mitra's Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) are going global, with testing in schools in Australia, Colombia, England and India. On their own, children can get about 30% of the knowledge required to pass exams, so to go further, Dr. Mitra supplements SOLE with e-mediators, amateur volunteers who use Skype to help kids learn online."
Jailtime For Jailbreaking 281
An anonymous reader writes "Remember how the Librarian of Congress announced that jailbreaking your phone was legal and not a violation of the DMCA? Yeah, well, tell that to Mohamad Majed, who has already spent over a year in jail and has now been pressured into pleading guilty to criminal DMCA violations for jailbreaking phones for use on other carriers."
