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The Courts

DVD Piracy temporarily legal in UK now->

Submitted by goombah99
goombah99 writes "TGD Daily reports that due to a notification glitch dating back to 1984, the UK laws governing DVD piracy are said to be unenforceable until the European Union Commission can meet to accept the UK law. This is said to be unlikely to happen before 2010. The problem arose in 1984 and was repeated in 1990, when the laws governing pornography and DVD piracy in the UK were not, as required under the EU agreement, sent to the the EU commission for approval."
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Space

An Inside Look At the SpaceX Rocket Factory 50

Posted by Soulskill
from the pretty-pictures dept.
Dave Bullock writes "The folks at SpaceX are working hard in their Hawthorne labs, cubicles and factory, building rockets that will hopefully bring future astronauts to the International Space Station. At the behest of Wired, I toured the former 747 factory which is now a rocket assembly line. 'Eschewing the traditional startup trappings of two college grads eating ramen, watching Adult Swim and coding until the wee hours of the night, SpaceX instead employs hundreds of brainiacs and builds its rockets in a massive hangar that once housed a 747 assembly line. Started in 2002 by PayPal founder Elon Musk, SpaceX (short for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) brings a startup mentality to launching rockets into orbit, which until recently was almost exclusively government turf. The hope is that minimal bureaucracy, innovation and in-house manufacturing and testing can be used to put payloads into space at roughly one-tenth the cost of traditional methods.'"
Security

Secret US List of Civil Nuclear Sites Released 167

Posted by Soulskill
from the no-harm-no-foul-right dept.
eldavojohn writes "Someone accidentally released a 266-page report on hundreds of sites in the US for stockpiling and storing hazardous nuclear materials for civilian use. While some ex-officials and experts don't find it to be a serious breach, the Federation of American Scientists are calling it a 'a one-stop shop for information on US nuclear programs.' The document contains information about Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia, and opinions seem to be split on whether it's a harmless list or terrorist risk. One thing is for sure: it was taken down after the New York Times inquired to the Government Accountability Office about it."
Movies

Study: Digital Movies in Danger of Extinction-> 1

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes "According to a study by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, movies shot on digital cameras cost $12,510 per year to archive, compared with $1,059 for traditional celluloid film. And, and source materials, the outakes and audio that are used to create special edition releases of movies, cost 429 times more to store, or $208,500 per year for digital materials vs. $486 for film. More crucial is the lack of any standards that would make viewing and reediting today's digital films backward compatibile with future technologies so that, in 100+ years, films made today could still be used for creating special releases then."
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The Courts

SPAM: Telemarketer fined over 46million irritating calls

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "A California telemarketing firm has agreed to pay a $180,000 fine to settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission that it made 46 million illegal calls. The original fine was $3 million all but $180,000 will be suspended based on the defendants' inability to pay. According to the complaint filed by the Department of Justice, since October 1, 2003, Voice-Mail Broadcasting Corporation (VMBC) and its owner, Jesse Crowe, have used automated dialers to "blast" consumers with prerecorded telemarketing pitches, the FTC stated. The calls pitched products from debt-consolidation services to mortgage brokerage services and other retail and financial services. When VMBC's telemarketing calls were answered by consumers rather than answering machines or voicemail systems, VMBC either immediately hung up, leaving consumers with "dead air," or played a prerecorded message. Such calls violate the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule. [spam URL stripped]"
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The Internet

Mac hack attack exposed as a PR stunt

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes "A McAfee security researcher Tuesday warned that a self-proclaimed Mac user had hacked and defaced two Mac fan sites for... excessive fandom. A screen shot of the hack reads, "This site has been flagged for excessive Apple fanboism, and has been taken down for 24 hours." The image depicts green Apple riddled with worms. Take that, AppleMatters.com and iPhoneMatters.com.

"This is possibly the first time a hacker is targeting Mac-related Web sites," said McAfee security researcher Harish Garg in a blog post on Tuesday. "This is interesting month for the Mac user base, with multiple Trojans/malware appearing along with a horde of security updates from Apple itself. Things are definitely heating up in Mac Land!" But the AppleMatters.com hack turned out to be nothing of the sort and before Tuesday came to a close, founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief Hadley Stern was doing his best to dispel the suggestion that EllisLab's ExpressionEngine software, used to publish AppleMatters.com, might be vulnerable to attack. "When I was first approached me about the hoax I thought it was a little harmless fun," Stern said in a blog post on Tuesday. "I am literally shaking right now because I did not fully understand the impact of this, so lesson learnt. Again, Apple Matters, running on ExpressionEngine, was in no way hacked. It was a joke publicity stunt that I thought would be funny to attract attention.""
Biotech

Get your whole genome sequenced -- just $350,000->

Submitted by
David Hamilton
David Hamilton writes "Now you can be just like Jim Watson. (No, not that way.) Boston-area startup Knome today announced that it will sequence your entire genome (PDF link) — all six billion base pairs of it — and then help you analyze and interpret it. A whole-genome scan is roughly 6,000 times more detailed than the SNP scans offered by 23andMe, DecodeMe and Navigenics. The catch? Sticker shock, for one thing — the service costs $350,000, although that should come down quickly as sequencing tech evolves. For another, Knome has limited its offer to the first 20 comers because of capacity constraints, so you'll also have to get in line."
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Privacy

Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request 140

Posted by Zonk
from the always-fun-to-carry-your-phone dept.
Mike writes "According to a Washington Post article, federal officials are routinely asking and getting courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data on subscribers. The data is used to pinpoint the whereabouts of 'criminal suspects', according to judges and industry lawyers. In some cases, judges have granted the requests without even requiring the government to demonstrate probable cause that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime 'Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives. Such requests run counter to the Justice Department's internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas. The requests and orders are sealed at the government's request, so it is difficult to know how often the orders are issued or denied.'"

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