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Senior Frac writes "A U.S. District Court is reviewing a case where a man has refused to give his encryption password over to authorities. This individual, from Vermont, is accused of having child porn on his laptop and is refusing to hand over his encryption password. His defense is one of self-incrimination. This ruling is one that is important beyond the child porn aspect into other, less onerous, cases, so I would encourage everyone to look past the scumbag defendant and at our own data."

An article at The New York Times begins:

The Rebel Alliance has won.

Evidence is emerging that some old stars may develop a second set of planets long after this would normally be expected. A BBC article explains how Astronomers believe the stars once had orbiting companions, but that these were engulfed when the stars expanded. This caused matter to be ejected from the stars, forming a disc of dust and gas from which planets could form anew.
The two stars described in the latest study — known as BP Piscium and Tycho 4144 329 2 respectively — possess many signatures characteristic of stellar youngsters. However strong evidence exists that these stars are, in fact, very old.

Spinal cord damage blocks the routes that the brain uses to send messages to the nerve cells that control walking. Until now, doctors believed that the only way for injured patients to walk again was to re-grow the long nerve highways that link the brain and base of the spinal cord. For the first time, a UCLA study shows that the central nervous system can reorganize itself and follow new pathways to restore the cellular communication required for movement.

sehlat writes "Sony may be dropping DRM, but they're not really going fully online for music distribution. Instead they're setting things up so you still have to buy whole albums via "gift cards" purchased at Best Buy, Target, etc. Does anybody outside Sony really think this will fly?

Details at Reuters."

Via BoingBoing. It would appear that the advertising claims for the Western Digital My Book(TM) World Edition(TM) II which include: "Listen to the music on your My Book World Edition drive while you're on vacation." and "Securely access and edit your files on any computer." and "Get files from home while at the office." may be false.

This Support Page specifically says: "Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the following file types cannot be shared by different users using WD Anywhere Access." Which means, of course, that if you have a great new multimedia demo of something which falls into the category of "Offer your clients an easy way to access business documents, designs, and artwork. Eliminates the need for a separate FTP server." and it's in one of a LONG list of "forbidden" formats, you're out of luck.

sehlat writes "There's a new article over at Ed Foster's Gripelog about the warranty on Palm Tungsten E2 and Z22 being ninety days rather than the industry-standard one year. It notes the fact that you only find out about this by opening the package with the device inside.

With software products, we all know that somewhere deep in the fine print the vendor probably disavows any real warranty. But it's a little more unexpected that a hardware vendor like Palm would hide — in the most obscure corners of its website — the fact that their warranty period on some products is so short as to be virtually useless.

"

Ariastis writes "Valve Software, makes of Half-Life 2, portal & al, has now taken the direction by many reviled companies by deactivating legitimate copies of the Orange Box imported by users from outside the country. No preemptive warning was given and gamers are angry. Guess one more company we used to love has now sided with the "we'll wring all the cash out of you" side."
http://consumerist.com/consumer/drm/valve-deactivating-customers-who-bought-orange-box-internationally-314690.php

Greg Beck writes "This homebuilding company invoked the DMCA to take down a website that criticized its business practices, while the company's motion to shut down the site was still pending in court. The company claimed that the website infringed its copyright by posting an image the company included as an exhibit to its own complaint, publicly filed in Ohio court. The article examines how it is becoming increasingly common for companies to use the DMCA to shut up critics without having to go to court, thereby bypassing any First Amendment right to speak the truth."
http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2007/10/how-to-use-the-.html

While on stage at a Gartner's ITxpo conference today, Ballmer got an ear-full from the mother of a 13-year-old girl who said after installing Vista on her daughter's computer she decided only two days later to switch back to XP because Vista was so difficult. Ballmer defended Vista saying: "Your daughter saw a lot of value"; to which the mother replied: "She's 13." Ballmer said that Vista is bigger than XP, and "for some people that's an issue, and it's not going to get smaller in any significant way in SP1. But machines are constantly getting bigger, and [it's] probably important to remember that as well." Says the mother: "Good, I'll let you come in and install it for me."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9041959&intsrc=hm_list

Malacca writes "Charles Stross has a new SF novel out. Halting State is in his own words, "a near-future thriller of skullduggery and rules lawyering in the shadowy world of massively multiplayer virtual reality games." It's already received praise from Vernor Vinge, John Carmack, Bruce Schneier, William Gibson & Cory Doctorow and is shaping up to be a serious contender for best read of the year. Excerpts of Halting State (Prologue and first three chapters) are available at Stross' website; readers can get a taste & see what all the fuss is about. The first hit is free. :)"
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/10/chapter_3_steaming.html

An anonymous reader writes "Grocery chain A&P is suing a couple of kids for making a silly video mocking gangsta rap videos, which the store claims is defamation. The video, however, is set in an unnamed grocery store. It turns out that it was in an A&P where the two kids worked, but that's not clear from the video at all. Since the store's name isn't mentioned at all, it's difficult to see how that's defamation. However, by suing the kids, the company has made it sure that many more people associate the store with the video. If anything, it looks like they're defaming themselves."

This past winter Calvin College professor Joel Adams and then Calvin senior Tim Brom built Microwulf, a portable supercomputer with 26.25 gigaflops peak performance, cost less than $2,500 to construct, becoming the most cost-efficient supercomputer anywhere that Adams knows of. "It's small enough to check on an airplane or fit next to a desk," said Brom. Instead of a bunch of researchers having to share a single Beowulf cluster supercomputer, now each researcher can have their own. What would you do with a personal supercomputer?
http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/

It could be a scene from Kafka or Brazil. Imagine a government agency, in a bureaucratic foul-up, accidentally gives you a copy of a document marked "top secret." And it contains a log of some of your private phone calls. You read it and ponder it and wonder what it all means. Then, two months later, the FBI shows up at your door, demands the document back and orders you to forget you ever saw it.

That is what happened to Washington D.C. attorney Wendell Belew. His lawsuit takes on special significance given today's Sixth Circuit Court ruling that surveillance victims can only sue the DOJ if they can prove they were affected. Also in light of that decision we can safely add Catch-22 to the list of literary references above.

A team of researchers (#iphone @ irc.osx86.hu) dedicated to finding means to fully control and interact with the new Apple iPhone claim to have successfully gained an interactive shell on the device. In order to achieve this feat physical access to the phone is required, as it relies on some minor electronics to be created and connected to the phone's serial port.

It is believed that general control over the iPhone will be available to the enterprising researchers within a week (after all, it has only just been a week since the iPhone was released), with the promise of enough control to allow for self-propagating code not very far away.
http://www.beskerming.com/commentary/2007/07/07/208/iPhone_Researchers_Gain_a_Shell