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The Courts

Xbox Modding Trial Dismissed 179

Posted by Soulskill
from the game-over dept.
It seems the harsh words from District Court Judge Philip Gutierrez on Wednesday had their intended effect; prosecutors in Matthew Crippen's Xbox modding case have now dismissed the indictment. Quoting Wired: "Witness No. 1, Tony Rosario, was an undercover agent with the Entertainment Software Association. He told jurors Wednesday that he paid Crippen $60 in 2008 to modify an Xbox, and secretly videotaped the operation. Rosario had responded to Crippen’s advertisement on the internet and met Crippen at his Anaheim house. All of that had been laid out in pretrial motions. But during his testimony, Rosario also said Crippen inserted a pirated video game into the console to verify that the hack worked. That was a new detail that helped the government meet an obligation imposed by the judge that very morning, when Gutierrez ruled that the government had to prove Crippen knew he was breaking the law by modding Xboxes. But nowhere in Rosario’s reports or sworn declarations was it mentioned that Crippen put a pirated game into the console. ... [Prosecutor Allen Chiu] conceded he never forwarded that information to the defense."
Privacy

Lower Merion School's Report Says IT Dept. Did It, But Didn't Inhale 232

Posted by timothy
from the so-what's-a-few-snapshots-anyhow dept.
PSandusky writes "A report issued by the Lower Merion School District's chosen law firm blames the district's IT department for the laptop webcam spying scandal. In particular, the report mentions lax IT policies and record-keeping as major problems that enabled the spying. Despite thousands of e-mails and images to the contrary, the report also maintains that no proof exists that anyone in IT viewed images captured by the webcams."
Image

St. Louis Museum Offers Thrills, Chills, and Lawsuits 140

Posted by samzenpus
from the everything-fun-is-dangerous dept.
theodp writes "Despite the whiff of danger, or perhaps because of it, the WSJ reports that the City Museum is one of St. Louis's most popular attractions. Housed in a 10-story brick building, the City Museum shows none of the restraint or quiet typical of most museums. It boasts a five-story jungle gym with two real-life jets kids can climb on, an enclosed Monster Slide that drops riders the length of three staircases, and a rooftop Ferris wheel. Sure, there are the occasional severed fingers and skull fractures, but museum founder Bob Cassilly contends that it is as safe as it can be without being a bore. 'They [lawyers] are taking the fun out of life,' says Cassilly, adding that 'when you have millions of people do something, something's going to happen no matter what you do.'"
Medicine

DNA cancer codes cracked by international effort-> 1

Submitted by Enigma23
Enigma23 writes "As reported on news.com.au, scientists from the International Cancer Genome Consortium of 12 institutes around the world will today release the first DNA profiles of some of the most prevalent types of tumours. While the story asserts that "A new era of cancer treatment has dawned" I'm a bit more sceptical, given that gene therapy and immunotherapy are still very much in their infancy at the current time."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:the correct solution (Score 1) 403

by ILikeRed (#31364204) Attached to: Throttle Shared Users With OS X — Is It Possible?

You might not be able to push a new server and new ways of working, but perhaps you could push a new service. Look into dropbox, and try selling it as backup, revision control, remote access, and the ability to easily transfer files with clients. Don't sell it as a fix to the son's problems, but a way for him to be productive outside the office as well as in. Appeal to the company being left behind technically if they don't start using cloud services for backup and revision control (with dropbox, the files will be backed up on Amazon's EC2 servers.) It runs on Mac, Linux, and even Windows, so all the systems can utilize the tool.

I would also spend some time working on my resume.

It is impossible to defend perfectly against the attack of those who want to die.