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Protonk writes "Geekologie reports a man was repairing his laptop in order to replace a PCMIA card and found a hardware keylogger. when this was reported to Dell (the manufacturer), a representative only said "the integrated service tag identifier is there for assisting customers in the event of lost or misplaced personal information." A request for help from the police department led to a FOIA request to DHS, which was denied. Scanned copy of the FOIA response is included. He has 60 days to file an appeal."

If you are calling pelosi and dean the "far left" you need to go back to your comfort zone reading Ann Coulter and watching the Oreilly factor.

This is what happens when someone promises intangible things and bases their entire campaign upon promising 'change' and 'hope,' two things which mean whatever you want, and mean different things to different people.

Too bad he couldn't actually give real promises and expectations other than 'hope' this and 'change' that.

Bloody sheep. You all deserve the hell you're creating for us.

An anonymous reader writes "This just in: a new 'compromise' FISA Bill (PDF) was just made public, which, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports, 'contains blanket immunity for telecoms that helped the NSA break the law and spy on millions of ordinary Americans.' The House vote is tomorrow, June 20. After all the secret rooms and everything ... if they get immunity and the public never finds out what happened, the only other logical next step is to convince everyone I know not to get an iPhone." CNN covers this get-out-of-lawsuit play as well.

Electionwatch submitted a predicted electoral map of the 2008 US Presidential election, based on the bets made by the intrade prediction markets. I'm always interested in these markets and how accurate they end up being. This one calls it for Obama, but then again you probably could guess that by just watching 10 minutes of any TV "News" channel.

"Vent radioactive gas? Venting gas prevents explosion. [Yes / No]"

Techdirt is reporting that Canada may be considering a "three strikes" policy which could see users internet access privileges revoked for file sharing violations. "Given how secretive the industry and the government have been about new copyright laws, perhaps this isn't too surprising. We do know that the industry was pushing for greater ISP liability as part of copyright law changes a few months back, so it wouldn't be surprising if ISPs were negotiating a "three strikes" type rule to avoid the liability issues. Of course, they probably want to keep it secret, as publicity (and resulting anger) about these types of laws in Europe has at least some politicians moving away from them. However, as the entertainment industry does keep succeeding in getting these types of laws to move forward, how long will it be before similar laws are proposed in the US, with "everyone else is doing it" as part of the reasoning?"

If only Vista had the ability to run across multiple machines.

Which highlights the HUGE elephant in the room on this issue: the whole thing is a marketing ploy, not a tech related solution.

The Problem:
Microsoft is finding its core PC maker customers are bleeding away at the very low end ($300 PCs) where the Windows OEM license is just too expensive to justify. If it allows this to continue, progress made in Linux on those devices will trickle up into more and more complex and sophisticated devices, quickly making OEMs wonder why they're paying for a Windows license on full price desktop PCs and laptops.

Microsoft's Solution
Announce that Windows can be stripped down and will be sold for low end PC devices (ie, a marketing announcement).

The Real Solution Required
Developing a scalable OS that can actually work on low end PC devices. Currently, Linux scales down much better than Windows XP, and Vista is only getting larger. Microsoft has to invest in stripping down XP, another distraction from Vista.

Microsoft spent ten years working on WinCE, which doesn't work well enough for anyone to use in the hand held PC realm that it was expressly designed for. If you want to argue about technology limitations of the day, then remember that desktop Linux was being developed at the same time as WinCE, 1998-2008. WinCE can't blame its shortcomings on existing technology of the day.

There is no evidence that Microsoft has the technical chops to developer a suitable mobile OS. "Embedded XP" is just XP sold to fill the market for PC-based devices. "Embedded CE" is just WinCE sold for non-PDA devices. Microsoft has no mobile OS to sell, and clearly has no ability to develop one anytime soon. It couldn't deliver decent performance in Vista within a half decade of trying, and that was just a PC desktop OS overhaul.

Linux already works and is free.

Interestingly, Apple has ported its desktop OS to the iPhone/iPod Touch "WiFi mobile platform" as a low power, flexible, but intentionally limited feature set (ie, not a desktop GUI nor a small laptop), offering a different alternative to Linux based micro-laptops rather than trying to ape them.

Microsoft should have pursued an original strategy like Apple or delivered a mini-desktop that works like the Linux community. Instead, it's in the position of trying to FUD Linux to death with a press release, despite not having the technology to sell.

Of course, this has all happened before.

The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile

Zune Sales Still in the Toilet

Tridus writes "The PC version of Mass Effect is going to require Internet access to play (despite being a single-player game), as its DRM system requires that it phone home every 10 days. Sadly, Spore will use the same system. This will do nothing to stop piracy of course, but it will do a heck of a good job of stopping EA's new arch-enemy: people playing their single player games offline." Is this better or worse than requiring a CD in the drive to play? Update: 05/07 17:17 GMT by T : According to a message from Technical Producer Derek French (may require a scroll-down) on the Bioware forums, there is indeed an internet connection required, but only for activation, not for all future play. Update: 05/08 04:10 GMT by T : Mea culpa. As reader David Houk points out, the 10-day window is in fact correct as initially described, so don't count on playing this on any machine without at least some Internet connectivity.

kylehase writes "The release of Wikiscanner last year brought much attention to white-washing of controversial pages on the community-generated encyclopedia. Apparently Wikipedia is very serious in fighting such behavior as they've temporarily blocked the US Department of Justice from editing pages for suspicious edits."

Lucas123 writes "A District Court judge has ordered the Executive Office of the President to tell the court by May 5 whether any e-mail server backup tapes were kept for a period from March to October 2003 to cover controversial issues such as reasons for starting the war in Iraq, the release of a former CIA operative's name and the US Department of Justice's actions. The White House has been working for months trying to fend off a lawsuit filed last May in federal court in Washington by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. The judge cited what he called an apparent contradiction by White House CIO Theresa Payton as to whether backup tapes had been preserved. He also recommended that White House employees be ordered to turn over any flash drives or other portable media that may contain e-mails. The White House missing email scandal has been developing for some time now."

An anonymous reader points out an article up at Science News on a question that, remarkably, is still being debated after a few thousand years: is mathematics discovered, or is it invented? Those who answer "discovered" are the intellectual descendants of Plato; their number includes Roger Penrose. The article notes that one difficulty with the Platonic view: if mathematical ideas exist in some way independent of humans or minds, then human minds engaged in doing mathematics must somehow be able to connect with this non-physical state. The European Mathematical Society recently devoted space to the debate. One of the papers, Let Platonism die, can be found on page 24 of this PDF. The author believes that Platonism "has more in common with mystical religions than with modern science."

Chris Gregerson writes "I work as a stock photographer/web developer. I saw a photo of mine used in Vilana Financial's full-page phone book ad. They wouldn't pay the licensing fee, and I wrote about it online (mirror). They sued me for defamation, producing a sales agreement signed by one ' Michael Zubitskiy' (who they said took the photo and sold the rights to them). I sued them for copyright infringement, and they added claims against me for trademark infringement, deceptive trade practices, and tortuous interference. There was a trial I'll long remember on the 5th of November, and the judge recently issued her verdict (PDF; mirror). She ruled Vilana Financial forged the sales agreement and willfully infringed my photos, and awarded me $19,462. All claims against me were denied. I represented myself during the litigation."

ethericalzen writes "The LA Times has published an opinion article about the legal semantics and analogies of file sharing. The article includes arguments from those who believe file sharing is theft and those who strongly disagree. As it points out, the common analogies to theft are often incomplete or inaccurate. The author states, "balancing the interests of content creators against the public's ... is a much more complicated task than erecting a legal barrier to five-fingered discounts." He recognizes that it is not a trivial concept, and that the clamoring from both camps about definitions and moral boundaries will dictate how businesses and users function in the future."