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Hardware Hacking

+ - Where is the reset button? 1

Submitted by
mpickut
mpickut writes "Where has the reset button gone? I can't honestly remember the last computer I used that had a reset button. When did someone decide that we didn't need it anymore? At first is was just laptops that lacked it, but now Microsoft has even taken away the three finger salute (in Vista you have to go through an extra step just to get to task manager!)."
Privacy

+ - Sex Offenders Have To Register Emails

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Internet e-mail addresses used by convicted Connecticut sex offenders may soon be in the hands of law enforcement. In the latest attempt to stop online predators, the House passed a bill Thursday requiring convicted sex offenders to register all their e-mail addresses, in addition to their home addresses, with state police. "We feel this is a very, very important tool as we go forward to protect children," state Rep. Stephen D. Dargan, D-West Haven, said in announcing the proposed legislation at a morning press conference. Dargan is co-chairman of the legislature's public safety committee. The House of Representatives passed the measure by a 149-0 vote Thursday afternoon. The legislation, part of an omnibus bill dealing with changes to existing sex crime laws, now goes to the Senate. For now, lawmakers are focusing on the e-mail registration effort as the primary way to increase Internet security on popular social networking sites such as MySpace.com. The proposal to require e-mail registration grew out of recent discussions between Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and executives from MySpace, who have been working together for the past two weeks to crack down on convicted sex offenders using the popular youth-oriented site. Earlier this week, MySpace officials said they had identified more than 5,000 registered sex offenders nationally who had created personal profiles on the network, including about 100 individuals from Connecticut. MySpace released the names to law enforcement officials after receiving subpoenas from Connecticut and several other states. Connecticut authorities are currently reviewing the data to see whether any of the offenders, by creating the profiles, violated the conditions of their probation and parole. Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer and a Cheshire native, was present Thursday when the e-mail bill was announced at the Capitol. "This is a critical issue for Internet safety," Nigam said. "As the social activities in the online communities increasingly mirror that of the offline world, our laws need to change with the times," Nigam said. "We can no longer unwittingly provide an advantage to predators online." The bill stipulates that the e-mail addresses would be maintained by police but would not be part of the state's sex offender registry accessible to the public on the Internet. http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ctmyspace0525 .artmay25,0,312922.story?coll=hc-headlines-local"
Security

+ - Thermal noise encyrption

Submitted by Light Licker
Light Licker writes "Measuring the thermal properties of existing cables can offer encryption more secure and cheaper than quantum cryptography, says New Scientist. A scheme from Texas A&M University exploits the fact thermal noise is related to resistance. Sender and receiver transmit over a wire using resistors to manipulate the noise — any eavesdropping attempt can instantly be spotted because it will change the resistance. Messages have been transmitted this way over more than 2000 kilometres — much further than any quantum security scheme."
The Media

+ - Where have all the good bees gone...

Submitted by mpickut
mpickut writes "Where have all the good bees gone? Maybee nowhere... well at least nowhere new according to one expert. Most of the hype seems to be related to poor scientific understanding and over hype on the part of the media. Apparently the "colony colapse syndrome" is localized and has been seen in the past, which leads some to believe that the cause is stess related to non-human factors."
It's funny. Laugh.

+ - Zune team getting amnesty for iPod use

Submitted by MsManhattan
MsManhattan writes "The Zune development team at Microsoft is apparently offering amnesty to employees who give up their iPods in favor of using the Zune MP3 player. An MSNBC employee has posted a photo on Flickr of the company's "iPod Amnesty Bin," which sports an image of a bitten green apple and the words "Bite me." Whether it's to be taken seriously or is a joke to boost employee morale is anyone's guess, and naturally no one at Microsoft was available for comment. From what can be seen in the photo, only a few early-model iPods have been deposited."
United States

+ - Best Presidential Candidate for Geeks

Submitted by blast
blast writes "I was wondering who the community thinks best candidate for geeks. I.e, regarding the war on privacy, "total information awareness" or whatever they're calling it these days, Internet regulation and taxation, copyright/patent reform, the right to read, the right to secure communications, the right to tinker, etc."
Music

+ - Trent Reznor rails against music price gouging.

Submitted by
Delusion_
Delusion_ writes "Zeropaid has an interesting article which reports that Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has been speaking out on his blog against price gouging practices of record labels, including his own, while on tour in Australia, where some retailers are selling his new album, Year Zero, for $29 USD.



...to the question of illegally downloading music, to which he answered "...I steal music too, I'm not gonna say I don't."...

...He goes on to say that sure he resents people getting his stuff for free but, unlike most other artists it seems he knows who's actually to blame for the whole file-sharing mess — record labels. He says that "... you got record labels that are doing everything they can to piss people off and rip them off."


The climbing price of CDs has already cost many music retailers to throw in the towel, especially stores catering to specific styles of music. Music piracy is usually blamed for the shift, but the fact that the RIAA has been fighting used CD sales tooth and nail, and that the average CD price has increased significantly despite the fact that media production costs have decreased since the early 1990s isn't usually credited when music retailers go out of business."
Sci-Fi

+ - Light Sabers Explained

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The popular science learning site HowStuffWorks.com has recently shed light upon the elusive details of light sabers. For those of us laymen without the force, we get an article explaining their history, their basic mechanics, and proper usage for everyday activities."
The Internet

+ - Fight MS in Second Life

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "SCION AND MOVIETICKETS.COM PRESENT THE FIRST-EVER MS FLY IN SECOND LIFE Help achieve a world free of multiple sclerosis (MS) by soaring into the virtual world June 11th through 17th. The MS Fly — an expansion of the National MS Society's successful annual walk, is an engaging and interactive adventure dedicated to ending the unpredictable and chronic disease. Participate in this exciting and cause-worthy event on a week-long scavenger hunt as you journey through the virtual world of Second Life with your avatar and MS Cape. Scour islands for digital tokens that grant you completion of one phase of the hunt. With each new digital token acquired comes a new incentive for the participant and more money to help end MS. MS stops more than 2.5 million people worldwide from moving. The National MS Society exists to make sure it doesn't. It's Time to Fly! Register now at www.themsfly.org"
Sun Microsystems

+ - Sun Says OSS Developers Need To Be Compensated

Submitted by
krelian
krelian writes "Talking at Netbeans Day, Rich Green, Sun executive vice president for software, expressed doubts about the current model in which open-source developers create free intellectual property and have others scoop it up to generate huge amounts of revenue. "It really is a worrisome social artifact," Green said. "I think in the long term that this is a worrisome scenario [and] not sustainable. We are looking very closely at compensating people for the work that they do.""
Google

+ - Google violating "Don't be Evil" motto?

Submitted by
ihuntrocks
ihuntrocks writes "Search engine giant Google, along with several other large companies purchase their server systems from Dell. The catch: Dell doesn't do the work on them. Instead, it is contracted out to another company, which only hires temporary employees, the majority of which have no technical background whatsoever. This company also largely does not supervise these inexperienced employees, but rather leaves that task to other temporary employees (who may also have no technical knowledge). This often times leads to misconfiguration of things, like Google servers, or sometimes worse: systems leaving the warehouse completely blank. This lack of supervision and technical background allow employees to bypass the quality control checking and additional auditing on these systems and make such errors, often times with impunity when this is discovered by the company. I also believe, as an IS professional, that companies like the one contracted by Dell hurt trained and experienced IT/IS professionals by offering jobs like this to temporary employees only, for near poverty scale wages. These temporary employees are often hired at the end of the quarter, when Dell places things on sale, to meet the volume demand, and are then laid off until needed again. Are companies like Google hurting IT/IS professionals by allowing their work (perhaps unknowingly) to be done by companies like this? What do the members of the Slashdot community think should be done about this by companies like Google, if anything, and what should we, as IT/IS professionals do to preserve quality of work and competitive wages when faced with issues like this?"
Announcements

+ - Mineral Oil Submerged Computer

Submitted by
WilliamGeorge
WilliamGeorge writes "In their off-time, some of the folks over at Puget Custom Computers did a fun modding project — a mineral-oil cooled computer, in a small fish tank. Surprisingly functional and also reasonably good looking, this could be a great DIY project for those in the modding community. The charts showing temperature build-up in the cooling solution are interesting, and the linked time-lapse video on YouTube is definitely worth watching."

I don't make the rules, Gil, I only play the game. -- Cash McCall

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