Slashdot

selil writes "A story popped up on the ChicagoBoyz Blog. It says 'Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would like very much to reimpose the old, so-called, "Fairness Doctrine" that once censored conservative opinion on television and radio broadcasting, is scheming to impose rules barring any member of Congress from posting opinions on any internet site without first obtaining prior approval from the Democratic leadership of Congress. No blogs, twitter, online forums — nothing.'"

Punishment can come later. By closing off entertainment, they have less to watch. In the aftermath, they can take advantage of community spirit to purge dissenters of all stripes.

With the Constitutionally mandated census of 2010 just around the corner, it appears the Commerce Department's attempt to use handheld computers to gather census information may not come to fruition. Originally, the contract was awarded at a cost of $596 million to Harris Corporation. However, the GAO has now estimated the revised contract, now costing $647 million, could grow to $2 billion and the equipment may still not work properly. There is consideration that the paper and pencil method might have to be employed to complete the census.

Harris Corp. spokesman Marc Raimondi has acknowledged the difficulties of the system but indicated, "After you spend about 30 minutes to an hour familiarizing yourself with it, it's as easy to use as a modern cell phone."

CraftyJack writes "Alan Stern, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, is leaving NASA. Little explanation is being offered. Among other things, Alan Stern was pushing for more fiscal responsibility within SMD, and sought to curb cost overruns."
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/mar/HQ_08088_SMD_AA_change.html

Jackson writes "Adam Boileau, a security consultant based in New Zealand has released a tool that can unlock Windows computers in seconds without the need for a password. By connecting a Linux machine to a Firewire port on the target machine, the tool can then modify Windows' password protection code and render it ineffective. Boileau said he did not release the tool publicly in 2006 because 'Microsoft was a little cagey about exactly whether Firewire memory access was a real security issue or not and we didn't want to cause any real trouble'. But now that a couple of years have passed and the issue has not resolved, Boileau decided to release the tool on his website."

Whiskers of carbon found in meteorites could hold clues to the infant solar system - some say they may also cast doubt on dark energy

http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?i=0a84ec35b5fba46f4b202002a32c946a

PowerUp writes "Just one day later, the near-blackout you didn't hear about because system operators took corrective actions in time. An interesting aspect of this event is that it was due, in part, to an unanticipated decrease in *wind-powered* generation."
http://www.ercot.com/news/press_releases/2008/nr02-27-08.html

As reported on Fox News and The New York Times, some Muslims are attempting to censor Wikipedia because of images of Muhammad contained in the article about him. So does one religion get to tell the rest of the world how they must behave because they'll be offended otherwise, or does the Internet represent all views, even when that view may be offensive to some particular minority?

You may have noticed a number of stories recently about undersea cables getting cut around the world. Apparently the total is now up to 5, but the scariest part of this is that Iran is now offline. You can also read Schneier's comments on this coincidence. Update: 02/06 17:42 GMT by Z : As a commenter notes, though the country of Iran is obviously experiencing some networking difficulties, it is not offline.

spasm writes "The Register (among others) are reporting the the US Army is doing prep work to migrate to linux, with RHEL expected to be a bridge system to allow interoperability between existing Windows-based systems and planned linux systems."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/05/us_army_linux_integration/

Wired tracks down the best links -- the ones that let you follow the primaries.

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/topheadlines/~3/229864533/click.phdo

00_NOP writes "Your plane may never have fallen from the sky, but at last we have proof that the Millennium bug was real. The Irish Unionist Alliance are a small and somewhat eccentric bunch seeking to re-unite Ireland, independent for 86 years, with the UK. But they've done the world a favour with what ever software they use for the date on their homepage — which states it is now the year 19108 (at least it does on Firefox!).

Anybody else seen real world examples of the bug?"
http://www.irishunionism.org/

p1234 writes "NASA has also asked Congress for three billion dollars for a project aimed at putting Americans back on the Moon in 2020 to set up a permanent outpost to support manned missions to Mars"
http://www.spacestart.eu/topic.php?id=16&replies=1

The greatest penguin migration of all time

In multiple media reports over the past two weeks, the US Army has professed its love for the penguin. The Army eventually intends to move from a Windows-based infrastructure over to Linux for its new, roughly $200bn weapons program.

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/05/us_army_linux_integration/

Not a Lawyer writes "Like many (all) of you I have received phishing emails. I got one for two FREE tickets anywhere in the US for SouthEast Airlines (fictional). I went to their website so I could forward the not so obviously fraudulent email to them. All the better to help them fight the smear on their good name. Alas, their website said that they are working really, really hard to get an email address so you can contact them over the completely new and unexpected communication medium of email. A lengthy wait on the 1-800 number let me to someone completely unempowered.

My question is, "Has the legal system established any precedence for companies to react to phishing?" I'm not a lawyer but I might advise my clients that basically it's a losing proposition so do nothing. Your thoughts? I have seen reactions from banks, Ebay and others."