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Your Rights Online

Submission + - RIAA claims it is owed $72 trillion dollars by LimeWire (nme.com)

Submitted by internerdj
internerdj writes: "The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) estimates that filesharing website LimeWire owes it over $72 trillion dollars (£46 trillion) in damages." NME reports this is 120% of the combined estimated wealth of the entire planet.
 
Cellphones

Submission + - How Accelerometers Work In Smartphones (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "Despite the accelerometer's regular use for games, videos, and other smartphone activities, few people know how the gadget actually works, or how engineers were able to cramp such a small but important piece of technology, which can detect motion in three directions, into a millimeters-thick smartphone. That's where Bill Hammack comes in. Hammack, a.k.a. "The Engineer Guy," is a professor at the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but the 50-year-old college professor also has a second life on YouTube, breaking down how various components of everyday technology work, from digital cameras to fiber optic cables. On Tuesday, Hammack released his newest video, which describes not only how accelerometers work, but also how engineers translate the three-dimensional technology to work inside a tiny chip."
Crime

Submission + - Ten Cops Can't Recover Police Chief's Son's iPhone 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Oakland Tribune reports that when Berkeley police Chief Michael Meehan's son's cell phone was stolen from a school locker in January, ten police officers were sent to track down the stolen iPhone, with some working overtime at taxpayer expense. "If your cell phone was stolen or my cell phone was stolen, I don't think any officer would be investigating it," says Michael Sherman, vice chairman of the Berkeley Police Review Commission, a city watchdog group. "They have more important things to do. We have crime in the streets." But the kicker is that even with all those cops swarming around looking for an iphone equipped with the Find My iPhone tracking software, police were not able to locate the phone. "If 10 cops who know a neighborhood can't find an iPhone that's broadcasting its location, that shouldn't give you a lot of confidence in your own vigilante recovery of a stolen iProduct," writes Alexis Madrigal. "Just saying. Consider this a PSA: just buy a new phone.""
Linux

Submission + - Linux Mint 13 (Maya) Has Arrived (linuxmint.com)

Submitted by OceanMan7
OceanMan7 writes: Linux Mint 13 (Maya) has just ben released. DVDs come in 4 flavors — MATE with and without* codecs and Cinnamon with and without* codecs. MATE 1.2 is LinuxMint's community-powered extension of Gnome 2. Cinnamon 1.4 is built upon Gnome 3 but has a more traditional look and feel. As with Ubuntu 12.04, upon which LinuxMint draws, all editions come with Long-term support (LTS) until April, 2017. Maya is available from all the usual sites: as well as by torrent. (* codec-free versions comply with U.S. and Japanese IP regulations.)
Medicine

Submission + - Skin Cells Turned into Heart Muscle for First Time

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: By taking skin cells and turning them into stem cells, a technique that is already well known, researchers were able to generate beating heart cells — a medical first.

"We have shown that it's possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young — the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born," Lior Gepstein, study author and professor of medicine at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Israel.
Government

Submission + - Anonymous releases 1.7GB of hacked DOJ emails (anonnews.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today we are releaseing 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now. Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump. We Lulzed as they took the website down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened.
Networking

Submission + - Groups launch $200M gigabit-per-second broadband project (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: An Ohio startup company has raised $200 million to fund gigabit-per-second broadband projects in six university communities across the U.S., the company announced Wednesday. Gigabit Squared will work with the University Community Next Generation Innovation Project (Gig.U), a coalition of 30 universities focused on improved broadband, to select six communities in which to build the ultra-fast broadband networks, they said. The two organizations will select winning communities between November and the first quarter of 2013, Mark Ansboury, president of Gigabit Squared, said. The new project comes at an important time, when many commercial broadband providers have stopped deploying next-generation networks, said Blair Levin, executive director of Gig.U and lead author of the FCC's 2010 national broadband plan.
The Military

Submission + - Interview With Bioethicist Jonathan Moreno About Military Neuroscience (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "Who’s driving a lot of neuro research? The military. Much of it is health related, like figuring out how to make prosthetics work more seamlessly and helping diagnose brain injuries. But the military’s involvement highlights the basic ethical quandary of neurological development: When our brains pretty much define who we are, what happens when you start adding tech in there? And what happens when you take it away?

Jonathan Moreno is quite possibly the top bioethicist in the country, and along with Michael Tennison, recently penned a fascinating essay on the role and ethics of using neuroscience for national security. He also recently updated his book Mind Wars, a seminal look into the military’s work with the brain. In this interview he discusses brain implants, drones, and what will happen when military tech hits the civilian world."
Piracy

Submission + - Kim Dotcom Demands Access To Seized Property To Defend Himself (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "On Wednesday, Kim "Dotcom" Schmitz and his legal team visited the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, to demand access to the data stored on his computers and hard drives that were confiscated during the police raid, and also requested a judicial review of the general legality of the search warrants police used to raid his mansion. Dotcom's lawyer, Paul Davison, argued that his client needs the data for a few reasons: To mount a "proper defense" case, to fight possibly being extradited to the U.S., and also to show that "excessive police action" was used during the raid. Dotcom could prove this in court because the entire raid was recorded by CCTV data, which is stored on Dotcom's confiscated computers. Even though the FBI demanded Dotcom turn over the passwords for Megaupload's encrypted data, he refuses to give up any passwords until he can regain access to his seized property."
Chrome

Submission + - Hackers Uses Six Separate Bugs to Break Chrome's Security Model (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Browsers are a really nice target for attackers of all stripes and skill levels. But, unless you're a savant or have just landed here from the future, you may want to take a pass on going after Google Chrome, judging by the insane level of effort and skill that an anonymous security researcher had to deploy in order to compromise Chrome during the company's Pwnium contest in March.

The researcher who received one of two $60,000 rewards handed out by Google for full sandbox escapes and compromises of Chrome during the contest used the alias Pinkie Pie. At the time that his accomplishment was announced during the CanSecWest conference in March, Google officials did not specify exactly how the researcher had been able to break Chrome's many layers of security, but just said that he had used multiple bugs to do it.

Now, Google security researchers have revealed the method and techniques that Pinkie Pie used, and if anything, the whole story is even more impressive than observers had thought at the time of the contest. Pinkie Pie used a total of six vulnerabilities in various components of Chrome, chaining them together in a long sequence that eventually enabled him to break out of the Chrome sandbox and completely compromise the browser.
Science

Submission + - Return of the Vacuum Tube (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Peer inside an antique radio and you'll find what look like small light bulbs. They're actually vacuum tubes—the predecessors of the silicon transistor. Vacuum tubes went the way of the dinosaurs in the 1960s, but researchers have now brought them back to life, creating a nano-sized version that's faster and hardier than the transistor. It's even able to survive the harsh radiation of outer space.
Oracle

Submission + - No Patent Infringement Found in Oracle vs. Google (cnet.com)

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: Today, the jury in the Oracle vs. Google trial found Google innocent on infringement claims. The jury deliberated about 30 minutes to reach the verdict bringing an end to the second phase of the trial, and a beginning to the damage phase which may be very little of what Oracle orginally asked for. Still no word on API copyright issues. Judge Alsup will be ruling on that in the near future and certainly have an impact on the dev community.
Government

Submission + - Days before Congressional recess, Senators need to be called before CISPA vote (privacyisawesome.com)

Submitted by
skaterperson
skaterperson writes: "CISPA, the cybersecurity bill currently going through Congress, has gone through a tricky legislative maze that has a lot of people confused. Here's the deal: CISPA is now tucked inside of Senate bill S.2105, which has bipartisan congressional support, is being actively supported by the Obama Admin., and is scheduled for a vote in early June. It's alive and well, and on a clear path to becoming law.

The Senate goes on recess next week, and which means there are exactly 3 days to make calls to their offices before they leave for a week and then come back for the vote. The most important thing constituants can do with that time is to try to get meetings scheduled with their Senators while they are in their home states during the recess. This is a proven grassroots strategy that was key to killing SOPA. If enough people contact their Senators either in person or over the phone, CISPA can be defeated.

Privacyisawesome.com makes it easy to contact your Senator's office in just a few minutes. Just enter your number and zip, and your Senator's number will be provided along with a script (for those who are phone shy). Everyone should do this to put an end to this awful piece of legislation."
Japan

Submission + - Little health risk seen from Fukushima's radioactivity (nature.com) 2

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "Two independent reports show that the public and most workers received only low doses of radiation following last year's meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Nature reports that the risks presented by the doses are small, even though some are above guidelines and limits set by the Japanese government. Few people will develop cancer as a result of the accident, and those that do may never be able to conclusively link their illness to the meltdowns. The greatest risk lies with the workers who struggled in the early days to bring the reactors under control. So far no ill-effects have been detected. At Chernobyl, by contrast, the highest exposed workers died quickly from radiation sickness."

Submission + - DARPA Pays $3.5 Million For New TechShops and Secret Reconfigurable Factories (businessweek.com)

Submitted by pacopico
pacopico writes: Bloomberg Businessweek reports that DARPA will pay for the creation of two new TechShops in Washington D.C. and Pittsburgh. The $3.5 million deal includes 2,000 TechShop memberships for military veterans and will have DARPA employees performing top secret work at night. They're part of the iFab team, trying to make factories that can be reconfigured on-the-fly through software. Maker mayhem.
Java

Submission + - Say Goodbye to Browser Choice? (cnet.com)

Submitted by plawson
plawson writes: c|net offers an in-depth discussion of the browser's future, making the case that "new mobile devices threaten to stifle the competitive vigor of the market for Web browsers on PCs." Given the vertical integration of many mobile systems, the article predicts that "... the only opportunity you'll get to truly change browsers is when your two-year smartphone contract expires..." The trade offs are security and performance. Web pages that rely on JavaScript and JIT will be big losers. How important is browser choice on a smartphone or tablet compared with a PC?

Submission + - Tesla S Set to Hit Streets in June

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla announced that customer delivery of the Model S, the company's first premium electric sedan, will begin on June 22, 2012. To celebrate the occasion, select customers will be invited to receive their new cars at a private event held in Tesla's Fremont, California factory.

Regarding the hardware underneath, Tesla claims that the Model S comes with the most energy-dense battery pack in the industry. Combined with best-in-class aerodynamics, the Model S can reach 300 miles in a single charge, the longest range of any electric car in the world. As powerful as it is efficient, the 40kWh battery and three phase electric motor propels the sedan from 0-to-60 mph in an ample 4.4 seconds.
Apache

Submission + - Is APache Tomcat NOW Enterprise Ready? (apache.org)

Submitted by
ekimminau
ekimminau writes: "I have seen a number of outdated articles discussing whether or not Tomcat is considered "Enterprise Ready". The majority of them state it is fine for "light weight" applications but most fall back to a position similar to this http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-01-2008/jw-01-tomcat6.html from JavaWorld in 2008.

My question to Slashdot: Do you feel that with TomEE (Tomcat Enterprise Edition) that Tomcat is more than just a light weight niche player and now stands with the rest of the "Enterprise Ready" Application servers?"
Science

Submission + - MIT creates superhydrophobic condiment bottles (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: First we had a superhydrophobic spray that meant no dirt or sweat could stick to your clothes. Then the same coating was applied to circuit boards to make them water resistent. Now MIT has gone a step further and solved one of the ongoing problems of using condiments: they've figured out how to make a food-safe superhydrophobic coating for food packaging. It means ketchup and mayonnaise will no longer be stuck to the insides of the bottle, and therefore there will no longer be any waste.

What's amusing is this seems to be a happy accident. The MIT team was actually investigating slippery coatings to stop gas and oil lines clogging as well as how to stop a surface from having ice form on it. Now their lab is filled with condiments for continued testing of their food-safe version.

Submission + - Know What Time It Is? Your Medical Device Doesn't (economist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A man with one clock knows what time it is, goes the old saw, a man with two is never sure. Imagine the confusion, then, experienced by a doctor with dozens. Julian Goldman is an anaesthetist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. After beginning to administer blood-thinning medication during an urgent neurological procedure in 2005, Mr Goldman noticed that the EMR had recorded him checking the level of clotting 22 minutes earlier. As a result, four hospitals in the northeast had their medical devices checked, and found that on average they were off by 24 minutes. The easy solution that devices could have used since 1985? NTP.

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