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Politics

$76,684 Will Buy You A Hit On Public Broadband-> 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The University of Wisconsin received a $37 million federal grant to build a network of free broadband access in the state's schools and libraries. After AT&T spent a little over $76,000 to elect friendly Wisconsin lawmakers, however, the program is now on the chopping block.If AT&T gets its way, Wisconsin will have to give the money back and the university will have abandon the program."
Link to Original Source

ISPs Consider World IPv6 Day Giant DOS Attack->

Submitted by mindbuilder
mindbuilder writes "Geoff Huston, chief scientist of APNIC, is saying that part of the reason for World IPv6 day is that internet content providers are worried that carriage providers are going to take advantage of the transition to widespread NAT to somehow control access to their customers and make content providers pay extra to carriage providers.

Carriage providers on the other hand see World IPv6 day as almost like a huge denial of service attack against their networks. Among other things they’re worried that they will be swamped by expensive tech support calls as customers can’t get to their favorite web sites. Some carriage providers are planning to block IPv6 traffic on World IPv6 day to protect their networks.

Meanwhile, the fact that many ISPs pay extra for equipment to put millions of internet users behind NAT and TAKE AWAY IPv4 addresses, even though they could get IPv4 addresses practically for free, makes it look to me unlikely that a lot of ISPs will pay extra to do the opposite and give out IPv6 addresses any time soon."
Link to Original Source

Police Seize Computers Of Tor Exit Node->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Police in Austria who apparently aren't familiar with Tor or what an exit node is, have apparently seized the computer equipment of some people hosting a Tor exit node because the node was used to access an illegal porn site. How likely is it that the police will understand Tor vs. simply assuming those hosting a Tor exit node must be guilty of something?"
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Science

Polynomial Time Code for 3-SAT Released, P==NP->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Vladimir Romanov has released what he claims is a polynomial-time algorithm for solving 3-SAT. Because 3-SAT is NP-complete, this would imply that P==NP. While there's still good reason to be skeptical that this is, in fact, true, he's made source code available and appears decidedly more serious than most of the people attempting to prove that P==NP or P!=NP. Even though this is probably wrong, just based on the sheer number of prior failures, it seems more likely to lead to new discoveries than most. Note that there are already algorithms to solve 3-SAT, including one that runs in time (4/3)^n and succeeds with high probability. Incidentally, this wouldn't necessarily imply that encryption is worthless: it may still be too slow to be practical."
Link to Original Source
Privacy

Herding Firesheep In NYC — Do Users Care? 200

Posted by timothy
from the not-so-much dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Following the Firesheep uproar, I spent some time telling people who don't read Slashdot about the vulnerability that open WiFi networks create in what seemed like the most effective way possible: by sidejacking their accounts and sending them messages about how it happened. The results were surprising — would users really rather leave their accounts open to intruders rather than stay off Facebook at Starbucks? The link recounts the experience, and also lists some rough numbers of how many accounts could be compromised at a popular NY Starbucks location."
Cellphones

Droid X Self-Destructs If You Try To Mod 757

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the now-that's-evil dept.
An anonymous reader writes with some discouraging news for hack-oriented purchasers of the new Droid X phone: "If the eFuse fails to verify [the firmware information (what we call ROMS), the kernel information, and the bootloader version], then the eFuse receives a command to 'blow the fuse' or 'trip the fuse.' This results in the booting process becoming corrupted, followed by a permanent bricking of the phone. This FailSafe is activated anytime the bootloader is tampered with or any of the above three parts of the phone has been tampered with."
Censorship

Congress Mulls China's Networked Authoritarianism 156

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the taking-notes-for-our-version dept.
eldavojohn writes "Rebecca MacKinnon tipped her hand about her congressional statements on China and how much Americans are invested in China's censorship, delivered today at a hearing on 'China's Information Control Practices and the Implications for the United States.' In an attempt to describe what China is pioneering, she coins the term 'networked authoritarianism.' Of most concern was Baidu, which has two Americans on its board of directors (out of five) as well as a lot of funding from American investors and mutual funds. From her testimony (PDF): 'As I have described in my testimony, the Chinese government has transferred much of the cost of censorship to the private sector. The American investment community has so far been willing to fund Chinese innovation in censorship technologies and systems without complaint or objection. Under such circumstances, Chinese industry leaders have little incentive and less encouragement to resist government demands that often contradict even China's own laws and constitution.' Is Congress genuinely concerned or are they just curious how they can make 'networked authoritarianism' work for them?"
Space

Giant Planet Nine Times the Mass of Jupiter Found 73

Posted by Soulskill
from the fat-planets dept.
cremeglace writes "In the late 1990s, astronomers noticed a distinct warp in the disk of dust and gas orbiting a young star some 60 light-years from Earth. Now, using new analytical tools, researchers have discovered a giant planet lurking within the dusty haze. About nine times as massive as Jupiter and composed mainly of gas, the planet is only a few million years old, proving that such enormous planetary bodies can form rapidly." What's amazing about this is that the images taken of the star clearly show the planet first on one side of the star, and then the other, several years later.
Censorship

PayPal Freezes Cryptome's Account 253

Posted by kdawson
from the gov-com-business-model dept.
grimwell sends in the news that after Cryptome's little run-in with Microsoft and NetSol, the activist site has now had its funds frozen by PayPal. Cryptome founder John Young notes, "Google lists thousands of instances of this asymmetrical high-handedness." "We have reviewed your PayPal Account, and due to the excessive risk involved, we would like to begin parting ways in a manner that is least disruptive to your business."

Prepare for tomorrow -- get ready. -- Edith Keeler, "The City On the Edge of Forever", stardate unknown