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Piracy

MPAA Agent Poses As Homebuyer To Catch Pirates->

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes "The MPAA used an undercover agent posing as a potential homebuyer to gain access to the home of a British couple charged with running a streaming links site. UK authorities decided not to pursue the case, but the MPAA continued, focusing on a Boston programmer who worked on the site, leading to an unprecedented legal maneuver whereby U.S. charges were dropped in exchange for testimony in a UK fraud case."
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Ask Slashdot: Bring Your Own Last Mile(s) 1

Submitted by Jaqenn
Jaqenn writes "I'm considering buying a house a little past the fringe of my area's broadband infrastructure. The major providers for my area all claim not to service the address, and if I cannot pay them to build out to the location I'd like some advice on what my other options are.

Lets pretend that I have a confederate 1 — 5 miles away that is eligible for service, and will let me install any kind of crazy equipment needed to route traffic between his location to mine. What are my options (and prices) for bridging that gap? Is it feasible to run my own fiber optic cable? How about some kind of microwave bridge? Point-to-Point lasers? Pringles cantennas?"
The Almighty Buck

Congress: The TSA Is Wasting Hundreds Of Millions In Taxpayer Dollars->

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes "File this under, 'Things we knew'.

The House Oversight Committee has come out with a report slamming the TSA for tremendous amounts of waste, specifically in the "deployment and storage" of its scanning equipment. Basically, it sounds like the TSA likes to go on giant spending sprees, buying up security equipment and then never, ever using it. A few data points...."
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Google

Jury Rules Google Violated Java Copyright, Google Moves for Mistrial-> 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes "Details are thin but the long covered Oracle Vs Google trial has at least partially been decided in favor of Oracle against Google violating copyrights in Android when when it used Java APIs to design the system. Google moved for a mistrial after hearing the incomplete decision. The patent infringement accusations have yet to be ruled upon."
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Science

Florida thinks their students are too stupid to know the right answers.->

Submitted by
gurps_npc
gurps_npc writes "Robert Krampf, who runs the web site "The Happy Scientist" recently wrote in his blog about problems with Florida's Science FCAT. The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test is an attempt to measure how smart the students are. Where other states have teachers cheating to help students, Florida decided to grade correct answers as wrong.

Mr. Krampf, examined the state's science answers and found several that clearly listed right answers as wrong. One question had 3 out of 4 answers that were scientifically true. So he wrote to Florida's Department of Education' Test Development center.

They admitted he was right about the answers, but said that they don't expect 5th graders to realize they were right. For this reason they marked them wrong. As such, they were not changing the tests.

Note, they wouldn't let him examine real tests, just the practice tests given out. So we have no idea if FCAT is simply to lazy to provide good practice questions, or too stupid to be allowed to test our children."
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Security

Time for a new movement: Ugly Email

Submitted by
whitroth
whitroth writes "I just finished my annual (idiotic) security refresher, with its usual explanation of phishing, etc., and I think it's time for a new movement, one that might actually gain traction in companies if enough of us push it: the Ugly Email movement.

Simply enough: plain text, only. All pics, spreadsheets, etc *not* inline, but attachments. How complicated is that, Barbie?

It would shove in everyone's face that "Click here to contact your company/security/bank/offshore account" is going to gotyourinfonow.com

Opinions? Alternate names? Locations for demonstrations?

                    mark"
Privacy

Internet-induced fear culture (or: Girls Around Me isn't the problem)-> 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes "Over the weekend, a story about an iPhone app captured the attention and ire of the tech world. Girls Around Me is a simple app that takes your location, and then queries Foursquare and Facebook’s location APIs to find any girls (or boys) that are geographically close. You’re then shown a map, powered by Google, with faces (pulled from Facebook profiles) pinned to it. Clicking a face lets you see more information about the person (again pulled from Facebook). Ostensibly, you’re meant to use Girls About Me to help you decide which bar or nightclub you should visit, but of course the tech world — and even the mainstream media — is instead labeling it as a rapetastic example of the lack of privacy afforded by Facebook’s default settings. You see, Girls Around Me wasn’t hacking Foursquare or Facebook to get this information: It was using open APIs to access information that, by default, Facebook and Foursquare make public. This isn’t a new feature of either social network, of course, but Girls Around Me is just the perfect, creepy illustration of why some information — like your location — should be friends-only by default. The problem with all of these apoplectic, spittle-drenched reports about Girls Around Me is that they assume the worst. They assume that people will use this app to prey on men and women. They assume that these people are all being hoodwinked by Facebook and Foursquare into sharing their location. In short, all of these reports are predicated on the assumption that we’re living in a world that is packed with rapists. I hate to break it to you, but we’re not. The world is also not full of terrorists, or muggers, or people who will steal your children while they play in the yard. The world is probably the safest it's ever been. Crime is at a 40-year low. What Girls Around Me really shows, in my opinion, is a perfect example of the fear culture that we live in — and technology is to blame."
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Have a taco. -- P.S. Beagle