Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Privacy

Submission + - Sex offenders must hand over online passwords (msn.com)

Submitted by mytrip
mytrip writes: ATLANTA — Privacy advocates are questioning an aggressive Georgia law set to take effect Thursday that would require sex offenders to hand over Internet passwords, screen names and e-mail addresses.

Georgia joins a small band of states complying with guidelines in a 2006 federal law requiring authorities to track Internet addresses of sex offenders, but it is among the first to take the extra step of forcing its 16,000 offenders to turn in their passwords as well.
The Courts

Submission + - Maryland Students Use Speed Cameras for Revenge (thenewspaper.com)

Submitted by mytrip
mytrip writes: Students in Montgomery County, Maryland use fake license plates to send speed camera tickets to enemies. High school students in Maryland are using speed cameras as a tool to fine innocent drivers in a game, according to the Montgomery County Sentinel newspaper. Because photo enforcement devices will automatically mail out a ticket to any registered vehicle owner based solely on a photograph of a license plate, any driver could receive a ticket if someone else creates a duplicate of his license plate and drives quickly past a speed camera. The private companies that mail out the tickets often do not bother to verify whether vehicle registration information for the accused vehicle matches the photographed vehicle.
Privacy

Submission + - TSA bans ID-less flight (cnet.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "In a major change of policy, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that passengers refusing to show ID will no longer be able to fly. The policy change, announced on Thursday afternoon, will go into force on June 21, and will only affect passengers who refuse to produce ID. Passengers who claim to have lost or forgotten their proof of identity will still be able to fly.

As long as TSA has existed, passengers have been able to fly without showing ID to government agents. Doing so would result in a secondary search (a pat down and hand search of your carry-on bag), but passengers were still permitted to board their flights. In some cases, taking advantage of this right to refuse ID came with fringe benefits — being bumped to the front of the checkpoint queue."
Unix

Submission + - SCO Group gets the boot from Nasdaq (news.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "The Nasdaq market has delisted The SCO Group, the Linux-seller-turned-Linux-litigant now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The Lindon, Utah-based company's shares were taken off the Nasdaq because of the bankruptcy proceedings, the company said Thursday in a statement. The company had appealed Nasdaq's decision to do so but lost its appeal on December 21, the company said in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company filed for bankruptcy protection in the wake of years of steadily declining Unix revenue and a court ruling in August that crippled its legal argument that its proprietary Unix technology is used in open-source Linux. A court ruled Novell still holds the Unix copyrights."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Jack Thompson:Games Industry Colluding With DOD (wired.com) 1

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "In a press release sent out yesterday, controversial attorney Jack Thompson claims he has found a correlation between the gaming industry and the US Department of Defense, who, he adds, are using videogames to teach "an entire generation of kids that war is glamorous, cool, desirable, and consequence-free."

The aim of the release is to notify the media of Thompson's new goal: proving the existence of collusion between the gaming industry and the Department of Defense in an effort to train more efficient killers."
Space

Submission + - Scientists say asteroid could hit Mars (msn.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Mars could be in for an asteroid hit.

A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a 1-in-75 chance of slamming into the Red Planet on Jan. 30, scientists said Thursday.

The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November and is similar in size to the Tunguska object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb that wiped out 60 million trees.

"We know that it's going to fly by Mars and most likely going to miss, but there's a possibility of an impact," he said.

If the asteroid does smash into Mars, it'll likely aim near the equator, close to where the rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian plains since 2004. The robot is not in danger because it lies outside the potential impact zone. Speeding at 8 miles (12.8 kilometers) a second, a collision would carve a hole the size of the famed Meteor Crater in Arizona.

In 2004, fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter, creating a series of overlapping fireballs in space. Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet.

"Unlike an Earth impact, we're not afraid, but we're excited," Chesley said."
The Courts

Submission + - TorrentSpy loses Calif. copyright lawsuit (news.com) 1

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "A federal judge has ruled against the BitTorrent indexing service TorrentSpy.com saying that its hiding and destruction of evidence made a fair trial impossible.

A Los Angeles court agreed with the Motion Picture Association of America's attorneys that the extraordinarily harsh sanction of terminating the case was necessary because TorrentSpy operators' actions impacted the ability for the movie studios to prove its case.

"The court finds that plaintiffs have suffered prejudice, to the extent that a rightful decision is not possible," the ruling said.

"Defendants' conduct during discovery in this case has been obstreperous," the court concluded. "They have engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence and have provided false testimony under oath in an effort to hide evidence of such destruction."

TorrentSpy operators intentionally modified or deleted directory headings naming copyrighted titles and forum posts that explained how to find specific copyrighted works; concealed IP addresses of users; and withheld the names and addresses of forum moderators, the court found. They had earlier been fined $30,000 for violations of discovery orders and were warned of severe sanctions if they continued to ignore the orders.

The court's decision is a "significant victory for the major Hollywood studios," John Malcolm, executive vice president and director of worldwide antipiracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a statement. Illegal copying and bootlegging costs the industry $11 billion globally, according to the MPAA."
Privacy

Submission + - Judge:Man can't be forced to divulge passphrase (news.com) 2

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.

Niedermeier tossed out a grand jury's subpoena that directed Sebastien Boucher to provide "any passwords" used with his Alienware laptop. "Compelling Boucher to enter the password forces him to produce evidence that could be used to incriminate him," the judge wrote in an order dated November 29 that went unnoticed until this week. "Producing the password, as if it were a key to a locked container, forces Boucher to produce the contents of his laptop."

Especially if this ruling is appealed, U.S. v. Boucher could become a landmark case. The question of whether a criminal defendant can be legally compelled to cough up his encryption passphrase remains an unsettled one, with law review articles for the last decade arguing the merits of either approach. (A U.S. Justice Department attorney wrote an article in 1996, for instance, titled "Compelled Production of Plaintext and Keys.")"
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows Vista SP1 Includes More Than 300 Hot Fixes (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has released a detailed roster of the contents of its forthcoming service pack for Windows Vista, and the list includes more than 300 hot fixes covering everything from data protection to video performance.

Microsoft marketing VP Michael Sievert told InformationWeek in Marchthat Vista was "high quality right out of the gate" and that the company would likely dribble out small updates as required via its Windows Update service.

Since then, however, users have apparently reported enough problems with Vista to force a change in Microsoft's thinking."
Security

Submission + - Icelandic teen prank calls White House (msn.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Teen says he pretended to be Iceland's president, scheduled call with Bush.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland — A teenager says he convinced the White House he was Iceland's president and managed to schedule a call with George W. Bush but was found out before he got to talk to the president.

"My call was transferred around a few times until I got hold of Bush's secretary and managed to book a call meeting with Bush the following Monday evening," Vifill Atlason, 16, told Reuters.

Local police confirmed the National Security Unit at the national police headquarters had asked them to bring Atlason in.

Jon Bjartmarz, chief superintendent at Iceland's national police headquarters, said Icelandic police had not spoken to their U.S. counterparts about the matter. He declined to say how police were tipped off about Atlason's call.

"As far as we're concerned, there will not be any further investigation, and I don't know if the American government is taking any action because of this," he said."
Google

Submission + - Google to dig up more personal records (msn.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Googling something or someone? If the state of Florida has public records about your subject, they might show up in your search results.

Many state agencies make numerous public records available online, but the information hasn't been indexed by the search engines at Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., the three most popular.

And that has made the data hard to find. If you want to know a school's test scores, for example, you have often have know your state Department of Education's Web address and then know how the agency stores and retrieves information.

Under a new partnership announced Monday by Gov. Charlie Crist, Google Inc. is providing free consulting and software that help make more files recognizable to most search engines.

Florida joins five other states — Arizona, California, Utah, Virginia and Michigan — already participating in Google's effort. Google hopes to get local governments involved in the effort."
Space

Submission + - Chinese Moon Photo Doctored, Craters Moved (msn.com) 1

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "A controversy over last week's photo of the lunar surface, allegedly from China's lunar spacecraft Chang'e, appears to be resolved. It's real but it isn't. An expert says the photo's resolution shows that it is of recent origin. However, for some inexplicable reason, someone on Earth edited the photo and moved a crater to a different location.

Some dogged sleuthing by a fellow space blogger has tracked down the truth behind the controversial first photo from China's moon orbiter.

In the week since the picture was released amid much fanfare in Beijing, there have been widespread rumors that the photo was a fake, copied from an old picture collected by a U.S. space probe.

The photo from China's Chang'e 1 orbiter is clearly a higher-resolution view, with sunlight streaming from the northwest rather than the north.

The mission's chief scientist, Ouyang Ziyuan, told the Beijing News that a new crater had been spotted on the Chang'e imagery — a crater that didn't appear on the U.S. imagery. Lakdawalla determined that crater in question it wasn't exactly new — instead, it appeared to be a crater that had been moved from one spot on the picture to another spot slightly south."
AMD

Submission + - AMD Pulls The Plug On Quad FX Enthusiast Platform (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) on Friday said it has stopped making the Quad FX platform that was launched late last year for power-insatiable computer enthusiasts.

The platform comprises up to two dual-core Athlon 64 FX processors, which operate in conjunction with Nvidia's SLI chipset that makes it possible to run multiple graphics cards that work together in projecting one image on a display. The overall platform targets gamers who often use multiple cards to boost game performance.

AMD has an upgrade plan for the Quad FX, but isn't ready to set a date for its release, AMD spokesman John Taylor said."
Google

Submission + - Northeastern sues Google over search patent (news.com) 1

Submitted by mytrip
mytrip writes: Google faces a federal patent infringement lawsuit by Northeastern University over technology used in its core Web search system, according to legal papers filed last week.

The complaint was filed on November 6 in Marshall, in the Eastern District of Texas — the U.S. court with a history of decisions that are highly favorable to plaintiffs in patent cases — but the case only came to light over the weekend.

The plaintiffs are Boston-based Northeastern University and Jarg, a start-up founded by a Northeastern University professor that is the exclusive licensee of search technology patented in 1997, a year before Google was incorporated.

The case centers on U.S. patent No. 5,694,593, titled "Distributed Computer Database System and Method," which was invented by Kenneth Baclawski, an associate professor in Northeastern's computer science department.

Baclawski is co-founder of Waltham, Mass.-based Jarg, which was incorporated in 1998. He first published his method of searching and retrieving information from large, distributed databases in 1994, according to court documents.

Slashdot Top Deals

With your bare hands?!?

Close