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Your Rights Online

Submission + - Legitimate ebook lending community closed after copyright complaints (digitalmediamachine.com) 5

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes: "LendInk, a community for people interesting in using the lending features of the Kindle and Nook, has been shut down after some authors mistakenly thought the site was hosting pirated ebooks. The site brought together people who wanted to loan or borrow specific titles that are eligible for lending, and then sent them to Amazon or BarnesAndNoble.com to make the loans. Authors and publishers who were unaware of this feature of the Kindle and Nook, and/or mistakenly assumed the site was handing out pirated copies, were infuriated. LendInk's hosting company received hundreds of complaints and shut the site down. LendInk's owner says, "The hosting company has offered to reinstate Lendink.com on the condition that I personally respond to all of the complaints individually. I have to say, I really do not know if it is worth the effort at this point. I have read the comments many of these people have posted and I don't think any form of communication will resolve the issues in their eyes. Most are only interested in getting money from me and others are only in in for the kill. They have no intentions of talking to me or working this out. So much for trying to start a business and live the American Dream.""
Advertising

Submission + - Apple Products Shown in 30% of Top Movies, for Free

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Eriq Gardner writes that Apple has long insisted that it doesn't pay for product placement in movies and television, but evidence from the Samsung trial shows that Hollywood has been a huge part of the company's marketing strategy over the years. In fact, Apple has been getting hundreds of millions of dollars of possibly free publicity over the years. "According to a survey by Brandchannel this year, Apple-branded products have appeared in more than a third of all films topping the box office from 2001 through 2011 (and 17 of the 40 top films last year)," writes Gardner. "That's more than McDonald's, Pepsi and the Sony Vaio combined for the past decade." For example, in "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol," Apple got more than five minutes onscreen worth more than $23 million and most amazingly, according to Brandchannel, is that Apple says it didn't pay a penny for product placement. Apple's continued dominance is even more surprising considering how other computer makers have moved in recent years to push it out. According to Brandchannel, Samsung had an official sponsorship deal with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, but that didn't stop iPhones and Macs from stealing scenes in what some call the longest Apple commercial you'll ever see. "There are several scenes where 3-4 Apple products including iPhones and iPads are being handled and shown," writes dangerdave. "Apparently you can’t be a super, secret IMF agent without an iPhone.""
The Military

Submission + - America is Finally Cleaning Up Agent Orange in Vietnam 1

Submitted by derekmead
derekmead writes: It only took 40 years. And yes, Washington still disputes Hanoi’s claim that up to 4 million Vietnamese suffered contact with the defoliant, which was dumped en masse in a U.S. air campaign to scorch away the dense jungle cover under which guerilla fighters hid. But the AP reports that the U.S. is finally set to start cleaning up the mess.

Not to give short shrift to the unconscionable, U.S.-led carpet bombing of Cambodia in 1970, of course. But to really size up the horrific, lingering sting of the Vietnam conflict you have to consider the equally long-lasting and nightmarish fallout from America’s wanton fire-hosing of Agent Orange. The numbers are staggering: Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed some 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and a galaxy of other herbicides on nearly a quarter of former South Vietnam. The defoliant ate through about 5 millions acres – a tract comparable in size to Massachusetts – of forest. An additional half-million acres of crops were decimated.
Government

Submission + - FinFisher 'Government Spyware' Found in Ten Countries (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: There are signs that the FinFisher "lawful interception" spyware may be installed on command-and-control computers in at least ten different countries, including the United States, according new research.

FinFisher secretly monitors computers by turning on webcams, recording everything the user types with a keylogger, and intercepting Skype calls. It can also remotely take control of a computer. Gamma International Gmbh, a British company, sells the tool to law enforcement agencies and governments. As Slashdot reported, the first known analysis of FinFisher came from CitizenLabs.org in July.

Rapid7 researchers analyzed samples and then looked for those attributes in a global scan of computers on the Internet, and found matches in Australia, Czech Republic, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Estonia, Indonesia, Latvia, Mongolia, Qatar, and the United States.

The matches simply indicate that these computers exhibit the "unique behavior associated with what is believed to be the FinFisher infrastructure," Claudio Guarnieri wrote in a blog post.

It's not known whether the US-based server identified by Guarnieri is associated with law enforcement or the federal government, or whether a private entity has gotten their hands on the tool.
Government

Submission + - FCC Asked To Reassess Cell Phone Radiation Guidelines (cnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A government report released on Tuesday says the Federal Communications Commission needs to update its guidelines for limiting cell phone radio-frequency exposure limits. The limit was set in 1996 to an exposure rate of 1.6 watts per kilogram, and has not been updated since. The report does not advocate in favor of any particular research, and actually points out that the limit could possibly be raised, but says the FCC has not kept up with research on the subject one way or the other. An executive for The Wireless Association said, 'The FCC has been vigilant in its oversight in this area and has set safety standards to make sure that radio frequency fields from wireless phones remain at what it has determined are safe levels. The FCC's safety standards include a 50-fold safety factor and, as the FCC has noted, are the most conservative in the world.'
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Helps NYC Deploy Big-Brother Monitoring System (msn.com)

Submitted by
Mephistophocles
Mephistophocles writes: "Microsoft has teamed up with the City of New York to implement a draconian crime monitoring system. Interestingly, the NYC will be keeping 30% of Microsoft's licensing revenue due to their level of involvement in designing the system's architecture:

Microsoft executed the system, but it was the NYPD that had to design it, choosing what data needed to be surfaced and when, and how it could best be presented to officers. As such, it is a true joint effort, and New York will be taking 30 percent of the revenues Microsoft gets from licensing the technology. Other cities will surely want to utilize this powerful system, so it's possible that, as Mayor Bloomberg put it, both parties will "we think we can recoup all our expenses over a period of time, and maybe even make a few bucks"

Is it just me, or does something about a city gaining direct monetary gain from designing a system to spy on its citizens seem a little unsettling?"
SuSE

Submission + - SUSE Slowly Shows UEFI Secure Boot Plan (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "One blog post at a time, SUSE is revealing its plan for getting SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) to boot on machines with UEFI Secure Boot. The short version: 'For now, it seems, SLES will implement an approach similar to that used by Fedora,' writes Brian Proffit. 'For whatever reason, SUSE seems to be taking a Saturday-morning-serial approach to their big reveal, taking their own sweet time to explain why they are choosing the path they are planning to implement,' writes Proffitt. '[Director of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Olaf] Kirch's first blog entry on Tuesday merely introduced the problem of UEFI Secure Boot. Today's blog only specified the use of the shim bootloader.' Just dying to know what's next? Tune in to the SUSE blog."

Submission + - Brutal July heat a new U.S. record (cnn.com) 1

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: The July heat wave that wilted crops, shriveled rivers and fueled wildfires officially went into the books Wednesday as the hottest single month on record for the continental United States. The average temperature across the Lower 48 was 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.3 degrees above the 20th-century average, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration reported. That edged out the previous high mark, set in 1936, by two-tenths of a degree, NOAA said. n addition, the seven months of 2012 to date are the warmest of any year on record and were drier than average as well, NOAA said. U.S. forecasters started keeping records in 1895. And the past 12 months have been the warmest of any such period on record, topping a mark set between July 2011 and this past June. Every U.S. state except Washington experienced warmer-than-average temperatures, NOAA reported.
Google

Submission + - Google awaits approval for Siri replacement 'Voice Search' (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by sohmc
sohmc writes: Some time ago, Google admitted that the biggest threat was not other search engines but services like Siri. However, Google just bridged that gap with Google Voice Search, already available in Jelly Bean, but also available via downloadable app. Google also submitted this app to the iOS App Store and is currently waiting approval. However, Slashdotters are no doubt recalling to mind the "Google Voice" fiasco, in which Apple refused to allow it to appear, saying that it replaces a native function. It wasn't until Apple was brought before Congress to answer questions on how it approves or rejects apps that Google Voice was brought in.
Software

Submission + - Productivity and creativity software coming to Steam

Submitted by
lga
lga writes: "Valve announced today in a press release that they are expanding Steam beyond games and will start to deliver other software. This means that Steam will compete directly with Microsoft's Windows Store and perhaps explains some of Gabe's disdain for Windows 8. The ability to save documents to Steam Cloud space also brings Valve into competition with the likes of Dropbox and Skydrive.

According to the press release:

The Software titles coming to Steam range from creativity to productivity. Many of the launch titles will take advantage of popular Steamworks features, such as easy installation, automatic updating, and the ability to save your work to your personal Steam Cloud space so your files may travel with you.

"
Robotics

Submission + - Solar-Powered 3D Printer Robot Creates Buildings From Sand (stonespray.com) 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Stone Spray is a solar-powered robotic 3D printer that can create entire buildings out of sand. The robotic device blends soil sourced on-site with a binder and then sprays the mixture onto a surface. The soil solidifies as the machine works, allow it to create furniture, load-bearing walls and support-free sculptural shapes. The device runs on solar power, and unlike other 3D printers it has the ability to print in multiple directions on both the vertical and horizontal plane.

Submission + - Kim Dotcom Raid - What Really Happened (3news.co.nz)

Submitted by chill
chill writes: The police raid on the Dotcom mansion has been discussed for so many months and now the footage of that morning has begun to emerge.

A New Zealand television station has details emerging from the trial as well as video from the raid.
Software

Submission + - Bad software runs the world (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by
whitroth
whitroth writes: "Excerpt:
What do most people think of when they think of software? A decade ago, probably Microsoft Word and Excel. Today, it's more likely to be Gmail, Twitter, or Angry Birds. But the software that does the heavy lifting for the global economy isn't the apps on your smartphone. It's the huge, creaky applications that run Walmart's supply chain or United's reservation system or a Toyota production line.

And perhaps the most mission-critical of all mission-critical applications are the ones that underpin the securities markets a large share of the world's wealth is locked up. Those systems have been in the news a lot recently, and not for good reasons. In March, BATS, an electronic exchange, pulled its IPO because of problems with its own trading systems. During the Facebook IPO in May, NASDAQ was unable to confirm orders for hours. The giant Swiss bank UBS lost more than $350 million that day when its systems kept re-sending buy orders, eventually adding up to 40 million shares that it would later sell at a loss. Then last week Knight Capital — which handled 11 percent of all U. S. stock trading this year — lost $440 million when its systems accidentally bought too much stock that it had to unload at a loss.* (Earlier this year, a bad risk management model was also fingered in JP Morgan's $N billion trading loss, where N = an ever-escalating digit.)

The underlying problem here is that most software is not very good. Writing good software is hard.
--- end excerpt ---"
NASA

Submission + - Curiosity on LEGO CUUSOO climbing the ranks! (cuusoo.com)

Submitted by
nemaki
nemaki writes: "A JPL engineer who worked on the actual Curiosity rover has submitted a model of the rover to the LEGO CUUSOO website where users can vote on submissions for LEGO to make into official sets. The model is very detailed and even has a functional rocker-bogie suspension. The maker includes a 46 page PDF of step-by-step instructions, itemized list of the required pieces, a Lego Digital Designer file as well as plenty of pictures and a video of the rover in action."
Medicine

Submission + - Passive authentication using your body's bioelectric signature (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Computer scientists at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire have developed a device that can ascertain your identity by measuring your bioimpedance — or, less euphemistically, how fat you are. The device, developed by Cory Cornelius and friends, takes the form of a bracelet with eight electrodes on the inside. Two of these electrodes are used to pass a weak alternating current through your wrist, while the other six electrodes work in unison to measure how your bioimpedance affects the current. Your bones, muscle, fat, and blood vessels all interfere with the flow of electricity, generating a unique bioelectrical signature. Once you have this signature, it can be used to authenticate other devices — a smartphone, say — or medical devices, such as monitors or wireless insulin pumps. At the moment, it’s down to nurses and doctors to keep track of you and your records/charts. With a biometric bracelet, nearby monitoring devices could automatically upload your data to a central server. Instead of paper charts, digital charts could be displayed on a tablet held by the doctor — the doctor would swipe the tablet over the bracelet, and your records would magically download."

Submission + - Rogers claims Charter rights to freedom of speech includes misleading ads (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Rogers Telecommunications is claiming that a ruling by Canada's Competition Bureau violates Rogers' freedom of speech. The company is in court over a 2010 ad campaign where it claimed that its discount brand "Chatr" was more reliable and suffered fewer dropped calls than the competition. The Competition Bureau found "no discernible difference in dropped-call rates between Rogers/Chatr and new entrants" and began legal proceedings against Rogers for violating Canada's Competition Act. The Bureau is seeking a $10 million (CDN) fine, an end to the ad campaign, and for Rogers to issue a corrective notice.

Submission + - Mexico Kills 8 Million Chickens to Contain H7N3 Virus 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mexico has so far slaughtered eight million chickens and vaccinated 66 million more in an effort to contain a bird flu outbreak in the west of the country, officials said Tuesday. The country's agriculture ministry had identified the diseased chickens during the vaccination process in the Los Altos region of Jalisco state, which led to the destruction of the H7N3-carrying birds.
Open Source

Submission + - Open-source movements bicker over logo (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: A gear logo proposed to represent and easily identify open-source hardware has caught the eyes of the The Open Source Initiative, which believes the logo infringes its trademark.

The gear logo is backed by the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA), which was formally established earlier this year to promote hardware innovation and unite the fragmented community of hackers and do-it-yourselfers. The gear mark is now being increasingly used on boards and circuits to indicate that the hardware is open-source and designs can be openly shared and modified.

OSI has now informed OSHWA, which is acting on behalf of the open-source hardware community, that the logo infringes on its trademark. The issue at stake is a keyhole at the bottom of the open-source hardware logo, which resembles a keyhole at the bottom of the OSI logo. The gear logo was created as part of the contest hosted by the group that founded OSHWA, and the mark was released by its designer under a Creative Commons license, opening it up for the community to use on hardware.
Movies

Submission + - No bomb powerful enough to destroy an on-rushing asteroid, sorry Bruce Willis (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Maybe it's the doom predictions some folks are fearing about the end of the Mayan calendar this year or maybe these guys are obsessed with old Bruce Willis movies. Either way a class of physics students from the University of Leicester decided to evaluate whether or not the premise of Willis' 1998 "Armageddon" movie — where a group of oil drillers is sent by NASA to detonate nuclear devices on an asteroid that threatens to destroy Earth — could actually happen."
Science

Submission + - This 281-Gigapixel Image Depicts an Entire Animal at the Cellular Level (gizmocrazed.com)

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: This picture is made up of 26,000 unique images that total a file size of 281-gigapixels; imagine that upload time! That picture is of a 1.5 millimeter zebrafish embryo, and the photo was captured using virtual nanoscopy. While at first glance the image doesn't that impressive but, at full resolution, you have the ability to zoom in to the most minute detail.

The technique used by the research group at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and their project, will published in the Journal of Cellular Biology in the upcoming months. You can try to see the full picture here but it does seem to struggle every once a while because of the enormous file size.

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