atommota writes "After years of complaints of police misconduct, the ACLU is giving free video cameras to some residents of high-crime neighborhoods in St. Louis, MO to help them monitor officers. The ACLU of Eastern Missouri launched the project Wednesday after television crews last year broadcast video of officers punching and kicking a suspect who led police on a car chase. 'The idea here is to level the playing field, so it's not just your word against the police's word,' said Brenda Jones, executive director of the ACLU chapter. The ACLU has worked closely with the police to make sure they are aware of this program. This is in stark contrast to the recent Pennsylvania arrest for felony wiretapping of a guy who was videotaping a police stop."

Dekortage writes "Eldest children have higher IQs than their siblings, according to a recent study by Norwegian researchers. The study focused on men, particularly 'on teasing out the biological effects of birth order from the effects of social status,' but indicates that the senior boy in a family (either by being firstborn, or if an elder brother died) has an average IQ two or three points higher than younger brothers. As noted in the New York Times coverage, 'Experts say it can be a tipping point for some people — the difference between a high B average and a low A, for instance... that could mean the difference between admission to an elite private college and a less exclusive public one.'"

Spamicles writes "The guys over at the Pirate Bay have launched a new, censorship-free image hosting website called BayImg. Users of the new service don't have to sign-up in order to upload images. However, they can assign a 'removal code' to uploaded images, in case they want to delete the files after a while, and tags to categorize images. BayImg currently supports 100+ file formats, and supports uploading Zip and Rar archives. The maximum file size of uploads is 100MB. The article also discusses TPB's plans for launching a video streaming service that will potentially compete with YouTube."

QuijiboIsAWord writes "Zap2It Labs, which provides free TV listing data for personal use, has long been the main source of program guide information for users in the US and beyond. They've announced via their webpage that, due to abuse of the service, data will no longer be available after September 1st. There is no other direct source, and no option to pay for the service even if the users wanted to. Without a data feed of this type, users will be reduced to scraping websites at best. Is this going to be a killing blow for MythTV?"

A number of readers sent us word about a malware attack that has been underway since Saturday that began with the compromise of more than 1,100 mostly Italian Web sites. Websense claims that more than 10,000 sites have been infected by now, 80% of them in Italy. There are indications that most of the Italian sites are resident at the same large Italian hosting provider. Trend Micro reports on the attack, which is launched from a malicious Iframe tag inserted into pages on compromised sites. For visitors to these sites, this begins a cascade of "drive-by" malware downloads if one of several targeted vulnerabilities is available and unpatched. The first page to which visitors are redirected by the Iframe hosts a recent version of Mpack attack software. Panda has a month-old report on Mpack (PDF) that provides copious detail about its nefarious ways.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Apparently the RIAA is getting sensitive about counterclaims. When a British blog author linked to a recent article about a defendant's counterclaims for extortion and conspiracy by the RIAA in a Florida case, UMG v. Del Cid, a record company executive who sits on the board of the RIAA's UK counterpart, the IFPI, threatened the author if he did not take his link down."

Jared writes "Michael Moore was afraid the Feds might sieze his new documentary Sicko, a scathing indictment of the US health-care system, because part of it was filmed in Cuba despite the US embargo. So he stashed a copy of the film in Canada just to be safe. He might as well not have bothered — the film has shown up on BitTorrent and P2P networks everywhere. So it's safe now."

pnotequalsnp writes to note that physicists at Fermilab have discovered a new heavy particle called the Cascade B. This is the first particle ever seen that is made up of quarks representing all three quark families. A team of 610 physicists from 88 institutions reported the discovery in a paper submitted to Physical Review Letters last week. This must be the discovery that triggered rumors that the Higgs had been found.

Nom du Keyboard writes "When The Consumerist published 22 tips for getting the best deal from Dell Computers, according to a self-described former Dell sales manager, Dell fired back with a take-down notice. You might want to look quickly, in the event it does get taken down. The Consumerist's lawyer's initial response was to deny the takedown request."

Martin writes "Microsoft has agreed to change the terms of its school agreement contract with Norwegian regional municipalities, following a complaint by Norwegian open-source software company Linpro to the Norwegian Competition Authority. Microsoft 'introduced two kinds of flexibility in the agreement, that were previously missing,' the head of the company's Norway operations said. One of these 'kinds of flexibility' involved Microsoft not getting paid a license fee for each Linux and Mac computer in schools."

christian.einfeldt writes "The Venezuelan Government announced the roll-out of four different models of Linux-powered consumer computers, three desktop models and one notebook. Branded 'Bolivarian Computers,' they will be will be produced by a joint venture of the Venezuelan Ministry of Light Industry and Commerce and a Chinese company named Lang Chao. The goal of the project is to jump-start a domestic IT industry and become an IT exporter to the rest of Latin America. At the ceremony introducing the program, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez claimed that the Bolivarian Computers cost 40% less than other commercially available models and come with a 3-year warranty."

christian.einfeldt writes "The FOSS press has speculated for some time now that Mark Shuttleworth would probably not agree to any patent 'protection' deals with Microsoft, but blogger Steven Rosenberg has found a page on Shuttleworth's personal blog ('Here Be Dragons') that unambiguously sets out Shuttleworth's opposition to Canonical's participation in any such deal. Rosenberg summarizes Shuttleworth's position in these terms: 'So there you have it — Canonical welcomes any efforts by Microsoft to improve "interoperability," isn't a fan of OpenXML, doesn't want to infringe on anybody's patents or trademarks, thinks Microsoft's threats are ill-advised, and would like to actually deal with the issue rather than respond out of fear.'