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+ - Finland to legalize use of unsecured WiFi->

Submitted by Apotekaren
Apotekaren writes "The Finnish Ministry of Justice has started preparing changes to the current law that criminalizes using unsecured wireless hot spots. The reasoning is the impossibility of tracking unlawful use, the ease of securing networks and the lack of real damage done by this this activity. It has also been proven hard for a user to know if an unsecured network is intended for public use or not. The increased ubiquity of legal open networks in parks, airports and other public places has also influenced this move by the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry has stated that the legal rights of the owner of the network have to be protected in the case of misuse.
Googles (poorly) translated version here."
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The Courts

+ - Handbook for picking MediaSentry apart->

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "p2pnet calls it a "MediaSentry lawyer's kit"; I call it a "Practice tip : collecting materials on MediaSentry relating to (a) illegality, (b) discoverability, and (c) admissibility". Bottom line is that there is going to be lots of litigation in the days ahead over the issues of (a) MediaSentry's unlicensed investigations, which are a crime in most or all states of the United States, (b) the discoverability of the underlying MediaSentry materials, and/or (c) the admissibility of the doctored text printouts, prepared for litigation, upon which the RIAA will seek to base its case. Since the RIAA lawyers will say anything they find convenient at the moment, a good technique for fighting this fight will be to collect and point to inconsistencies in their affidavits and other court papers, which I've begun collecting. If you have any suggestions for additions to my collection, don't hesitate to submit them here; I will review all comments."
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Robotics

+ - Dutch unveil robot gas station attendant->

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes "According to a Reuters' story, Dutch inventors today took the wraps off a $111,100 car-fueling robot they say is the first of its kind. After registering the car as it pulls up to the pump, the machine matches your fuel cap design with those in a database and your car's fuel types, and then a robotic arm fitted with multiple sensors extends from a regular gas pump, "opens the car's flap, unscrews the cap, picks up the fuel nozzle and directs it towards the tank opening, much as a human arm would, and as efficiently." Would you like green stamps with that?"
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Wii

+ - Nintendo Wii Fully Exploited

Submitted by Croakyvoice
Croakyvoice writes "The 24th Annual Chaos Communication Congress was the launchpad for the unveiling of the hacking of the Nintendo Wii via an exploit to allow homebrew to run in native Wii mode ( previously only Gamecube Homebrew was available on the Wii) which will allow access to the Wiimote, WiFi and SD Cart Slot. Tehskeen a Wii scene site has today posted an interview with the author of the exploit who has discussed the release to the public and linux amongst other things."
KDE

+ - Canonical Passing on KDE?->

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes "With the announcement that Kubuntu won't have long term support (LTS) from Canonical, many are speculating that KDE will fall by the roadside in terms of use as Ubuntu seems to be the dominant distribution largely by the hand of Dell. Religious wars aside, will KDE suffer from the popularity and momentum of Canonical's Ubuntu?"
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Software

+ - Obama Pledges Support for Open Document Formats->

Submitted by
Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes "ODF first made the headlines in Massachusetts when presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was its governor. Now, another presidential candidate has pledged his support for them as well. On November 14th, Barack Obama revealed his detailed IT plan for a more open and technically enabled government in a speech at Google's Mountainview campus. In that speech, he said: "It's no coincidence that one of the most secretive Administrations in history has favored special interests and pursued policies that could not stand up to sunlight. As President, I'll change that. I'll put government data online in universally accessible formats." In calling for open formats, Obama has introduced an IT hot potato into the presidential debate that has already riled the waters in multiple state legislatures and been the subject of heavy lobbying by vendors. Whether other candidates in general — and Mitt Romney in particular — will respond in kind or opt to keep their distance remains to be seen."
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Censorship

+ - Law firm claims copyright on viewing HTML source 2

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "A law firm with all sorts of interesting views on copyrights has decided to go the extra mile. As reported on Tech Dirt, they've decided that viewing the HTML source of their site is a violation of copyright. Poorly timed April Fools joke, or just some fancy lawyering?"
Google

SPAM: Google Hacked? Spam Sites Infesting Search Results 207

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

The Google Watchdog blog is reporting that "Spam and virus sites infesting the Google SERPs in several categories" and speculates, ...Google's own index has been hacked. The circumvention of a guideline normally picked up by the Googlebot quickly is worrisome. The fact that none of the sites have real content and don't appear to even be hosted anywhere is even more scary. How did

"It's in process": So wrapped up in red tape that the situation is almost hopeless.

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