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The Courts

Submission + - No Right to Privacy When Your Computer Is Repaired (zdnet.com) 3

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes: "ZDNet's Police Blotter bring us the interesting story of a Pennsylvania man who brought his computer into Circuit City to have a DVD burner installed on his computer and wound up being arrested for having child pornography on his hard drive. Circuit City employees discovered the child pornography while perusing Kenneth Sodomsky's hard drive for files to test the burner, then proceeded to call the police, who arrested Sodomsky and confiscated the computer. Sodomsky's lawyer argued in court that the Circuit City techs had no right to go rifling through the hard drive, and the trial court agreed, but prosecutors appealed and the appeals court overturned the lower court's decision, based on the fact that Sodomsky had consented to the installation of the DVD drive and the techs "weren't randomly perusing the drive for contraband, but instead were testing its functioning in a 'commercially accepted manner.'""
Education

Submission + - John Haught on Theology and Science (salon.com)

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes: "Salon.com has this excellent interview with John Haught, a Roman Catholic theologian at Georgetown University, whose newest book ("God and the New Atheism") takes a look at how religion and science can co-exist. He testified in the landmark 2005 Dover trial, against intelligent design. He does not see evolution as something that invalidates theology, but pushes theology to re-examine its view of God. As well, he believes that the "new atheism" (proposed by Richard Dawkins and others), whereby God can be removed from the equation as some sort of delusion, as showing too much faith in science's ability to identify and explain the functioning of the universe."
Security

Submission + - IT Pro Admits Stealing 8.4M Consumer Records (channelregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes: "The Channel Register is reporting that a database administrator at Fidelity National Information Services, a consumer reporting agency in Florida, has admitted to stealing more than 8.4 million account records and selling them to a data broker. The DBA, William Gary Sullivan, faces up to 10 years in prison and fines of $500,000. He worked at a subsidiary of Fidelity and used his access to its database to steal customer names, addresses and financial account information, then used a business he incorporated to sell the list to an accomplice, who eventually sold it to direct marketing firms."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Commodore 64 Still Beloved After All These Years (cnn.com)

Submitted by
techsoldaten
techsoldaten writes: "CNN is running a story about the Commodore 64 and how people are still devoted to it after all these years. From the article, "Like a first love or a first car, a first computer can hold a special place in people's hearts. For millions of kids who grew up in the 1980s, that first computer was the Commodore 64. Twenty-five years later, that first brush with computer addiction is as strong as ever." Now if they will only come talk to me about my 8088."
Communications

Submission + - Site to Resurrect Dead Forum Comments (wired.com)

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes: "May the airing of grievances commence! Via Wired, we find out that Billy Chasen, responsible for the exploded iPod display is starting a new website called "Don't Censor Me", dedicated to horror stories about online moderators and their negative treatment of comments/posts. It is described as a site to counterbalance unfair website moderation. Apparently Digg is such a large offender that it has its own tab."
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA ordered to divulge expenses-per-download

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: The Court has ordered UMG Recordings, Warner Bros. Records, Interscope Records, Motown, and SONY BMG to disclose their expenses-per-download to the defendant's lawyers, in UMG v. Lindor, a case pending in Brooklyn. The Court held that the expense figures are relevant to the issue of whether the RIAA's attempt to recover damages of $750 or more per 99-cent song file, is an unconstitutional violation of due process.
Transportation

Submission + - America Takes Another Look at Maglev Trains (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by
longacre
longacre writes: "With highways and airports steadily grinding to a crawl and fuel prices skyrocketing, city planners are taking a new look at high-speed rail solutions such as maglev to alleviate the nation's transportation bottlenecks. At costs of up to $100 million per track mile, the 300 mph, virtually silent, frictionless trains are a hard sell. In places like Los Angeles, however, where the next 30 years will add 6 million people to the population of an area whose transportation infrastructure is already overwhelmed, new capacity is desperately needed. Includes video of a General Atomics maglev prototype in action."
The Internet

Submission + - Flawed Online Dating Bill Being Pushed in NJ (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes: "According to a report on ars technica, a committee of the New Jersey Assembly is trying to push an on-line dating bill even though it contains significant flaws. The Internet Dating Safety Act would require dating web sites that interact with customers in New Jersey to indicate whether they do criminal background checks and if people who fail such checks are still allowed to register with the site. In addition, the warnings would be displayed in all emails and all sign-up web pages where the site interacts with a New Jersey customer, in a bold, 12-point font. For sites the do background checks, they would be required to inform NJ users of that fact, in the same type of font. And for sites that might allow convicted criminals to sign up, there would be a strict admonition that background checks are not infallible and that the data they use might be incomplete. While perhaps there is merit in the attempt to make online dating safer, you have to wonder what the NJ Assembly actually hopes to accomplish."
The Courts

Submission + - Vonage Lose Appeal; Verizon Owed $120 Million (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes: "Things do not look good for Vonage. Yesterday, they lost their request for reconsideration of their settlement with Verizon. This means Vonage owes Verizon $120 million to end the patent lawsuit filed against them. The costs associated with defending the case have cut into Vonage's bottom line, and despite attempts to cut costs by laying off 10% of their workforce, they may be unable to make a payment against their debt come December. According to the settlement, Vonage will pay $117.5 million to Verizon and another $2.5 million dollars to charity. Vonage's shares have dropped 87% since their IPO, now hovering around $1.50 per share."
Privacy

Submission + - Facebook App Exposes User Information (valleywag.com)

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes: "According to a report on Valleywag.com, the Facebook application Compare People contains a vulnerability that allows user information to be seen by search engines. What type of information? Age, gender, city, ZIP code, favorite music, favorite movies, favorite TV shows, favorite books, "about me," activities, interests, and political views are all searchable. Further, the company that built the app, Chainn, has no information available on their web site, save an email address."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - 5 Not-So-Awesome Sci-Fi Inventions (cracked.com)

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes: "Science fiction often makes the future seem like a wonderful place, with all sorts of cool gadgets and technologies that we can only dream of. However, the folks at Cracked.com took a hard look at what your average sci-fi enthusiast would consider some of the best inventions the genre has to offer and determined the 5 that would actually suck. They are:
  1. Matter Replicators
  2. Teleporters
  3. Holodecks
  4. Jet Packs
  5. Flying Cars


It's not so much the technologies themselves, but the reasons why they would suck that are at once funny and very cogent."
Encryption

Submission + - NIST Opens Competition for a New Hash Algorithm (nist.gov)

Submitted by
Invisible Pink Unicorn
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes: "The National Institute of Standards and Technology has opened a public competition for the development of a new cryptographic hash algorithm, which will be called Secure Hash Algorithm-3 (SHA-3), and will augment the current algorithms specified in the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 180-2. This is in response to serious attacks reported in recent years against cryptographic hash algorithms, including SHA-1, and because SHA-1 and the SHA-2 family share a similar design. Submissions are being accepted through October 2008, and the competition timeline indicates that a winner will be announced in 2012."

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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