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Censorship

+ - LiveJournal Employee Publicly Mocks Users->

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "LiveJournal recently permentantly suspended (without warning) the accounts of two fandom artists for allegedly violating "obscenity" policies. This follows in the wake of previous deletions , in which most of the outrage came from LJ's "delete first, ask questions later" policies.

Now it seems that in the wake of recent deletions, LiveJournal employee Abe Hassan (known as burr86 on LiveJournal), who has often served as a spokesperson for LJ on such communities as lj_biz, was discovered mocking banned users and fandom in general in a flamewar community. Outrage ensues.

Perhaps now would be a good time for LJ to hire an actual public relations specialist?"
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Role Playing (Games)

+ - Second Life Financial Sector in Crisis?->

Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous writes "Second Life's micro-economy is currently in the grip of a financial crisis, its real, its here and its now! This all started some months ago and is in part thanks to Linden Lab's sheer incompetence and greed. Many things have led SL economy to the edge of collapse, many of them had to do with the way Linden Lab handles matters. They keep slapping `residents` in the face, with mainland market flood, age verification threatening, which is by the way illegal in many countries, lies, poor communication, and last but not least, gambling ban."
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Biotech

+ - The physics of beer bubbles

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes "Yesterday, I told you about virtual beer. Today, let's follow two North America researchers who are studying the physics of real beer bubbles. 'Singly scattered waves form the basis of many imaging techniques such as radar or seismic exploration.' But pouring beer in a mug involves multiply scattered acoustic waves. They are more complex to study, but they can be used to look at various phenomena, such as predicting volcanic eruptions or understanding the movement of particles in fluids like beer. They also could be used to monitor the structural health of bridges and buildings or the stability of food products over time. Read more for additional references and a photo showing how the researchers monitor beer bubbles."
Security

+ - The Physical Hacks at DefCon->

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes "As we all know, DefCon is occurring in Vegas this weekend but Saturday held a room that focused on possibly the oldest form of hacking — lockpicking. That's right, as software security becomes better and better, the focus may instead shift towards simple hacking tips like looking over someone's shoulder for their password, faking employment or just picking the locks to gain access to the building where machines are left on overnight. This is nothing to sneeze at, "Medeco deadbolt locks relied on worldwide at embassies, banks and other tempting targets for thieves, spies or terrorists can be opened in seconds with a strip of metal and a thin screw driver, Marc Tobias of Security.org demonstrated for AFP ... Tobias says he refuses to publish details of 'defeating' the locks because they are used in places ranging from homes, banks and jewelers to the White House and the Pentagon. He asked AFP not to disclose how it is done." I'm sure all Slashdot readers are savvy enough to use firewall(s) but do you know and trust what locks 'physically' protect your data from hacks like these?"
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Programming

+ - A good look at six open source graphics utilities

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Tis article provide a survey of a number of popular Linux data visualization tools and include some insight into their other capabilities. For example, does the tool provide a language for numerical computation? Is the tool interactive or does it operate solely in batch mode? Can you use the tool for image or digital signal processing? Does the tool provide language bindings to support integration into user applications (such as Python, Tcl, Java programming languages, and so on)? It also demonstrate the tools' graphical capabilities. Finally, it identifies the strengths of each tool to help you decide which is best for your computational task or data visualization."
Software

+ - Security: helpful downloads->

Submitted by
Jackaubry
Jackaubry writes "Podslurping, where data is stolen using a USB storage device such as an iPod or thumb drive, is becoming a serious concern for both business and home. This two products can make your data unslurpable. USB LOCK RP (Network Version) ,and USB LOCK AP (for personal use) Both 10 day trials can be freely downloaded from http://www.advansysperu.com/"
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Hardware Hacking

+ - Touchscreen Voting Decertified in California->

Submitted by bbsguru
bbsguru writes "With the news last week that University of California researchers had found vulnerabilities in every California Certified electronic voting machine, the Cal Secretary of State (who requested the assessment) had until Friday to decide what to do about it. Late Friday, she did: most Touchscreen voting machines are Decertified in California, and may not be used in the Febuary primary elections. The last minute announcement means many counties will be stuck with millions of dollars worth of paperweights. Machines by Diebold and Sequoia are out entirely, those in Orange County that were made by Hart Intercivic are allowed provide new security measures are taken.
Yes, this will end up in court."
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Privacy

House Approves Warrantless Wiretapping Extension 342

Posted by Zonk
from the a-big-thank-you-to-congress dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The House of Representatives voted 227-183 to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping of telephone and electronic communications. The vote extends the FISA amendment for six months. 'The administration said the measure is needed to speed the National Security Agency's ability to intercept phone calls, e-mails and other communications involving foreign nationals "reasonably believed to be outside the United States." Civil liberties groups and many Democrats said it goes too far, possibly enabling the government to wiretap U.S. residents communicating with overseas parties without adequate oversight from courts or Congres.'"
Spam

+ - "Viagra spam" emperor gets 30 years behin->

Submitted by
juct
juct writes "A Federal Court in Minneapolis has sentenced Christopher William Smith, master spammer and web dealer in illegal pharmaceuticals, to 30 years in prison. But despite the CAN-Spam Act introduced in his honour, the charges did not include spamming. Arrested in September 2006, Smith apparently tampered with the prison phone system to evade automatic call recording, and then attempted to negotiate hits on the family of a witness in his trial and of his own wife. The unusually severe sentence is ascribed as much to Smith's general behaviour (absconding and making death threats) as to the specific offences with which he was charged. Strangely, despite the CAN-Spam Act, none of the charges related directly to his use of spam."
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Security

+ - DDOS Hacker gets OWNED by Cannabis Culture Forums->

Submitted by ArghMonkey
ArghMonkey writes "Looks like the hacker responsible for over 20 DDOS attacks on various sites, Eric Leech, finally has been exposed and through some internet investigation his name, picture, address, house picture, phone number etc. is available to the public. Suffered from a DDOS? Check out the link to see if you recognize the guy."
Link to Original Source

Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.

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