Comment Re:an alert border patrol officer (Score 2, Insightful) 1079
Alert != abusive
Beating and throwing someone in jail on a charge like this doesn't protect anybody.
Submission + - Has RIAA expert Jacobson contradicted himself? (blogspot.com) 1
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "A year and five months after examining the defendant's hard drive in UMG v. Lindor, the RIAA's "expert" witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson, has issued a "supplemental report" which appears to contradict his earlier "reports" alluding to the hard drive inspection. In view of the superb job the Slashdot community and the Groklaw community did in helping first to prepare for, and then to vet, Jacobson's deposition, I humbly submit for your learned review the now three (3) versions of the "expert's" opinions based on the hard drive, for your analysis. As with almost all federal litigation documents nowadays, they are, unfortunately, in *pdf format: (a) December 19, 2006, declaration; (b) unsigned October 25, 2006, report, awaiting approval from RIAA lawyers; and (c) December 15, 2007, version. The initial observations of commentators on my blog are located here."
Submission + - Rsync.net warrant canary no longer updated (rsync.net) 1
An anonymous reader writes: Rsync.net operates a Warranty Canary, that should be updated weekly, in case of any searches/seizures.
The last update was 12/09/2007 — 1.5 weeks ago.
What's happened?
The last update was 12/09/2007 — 1.5 weeks ago.
What's happened?
Submission + - DIY Diamond Thermal Compound (recommendedspec.com)
Jayson Anders writes: Research has been done demonstrating a far superior type of thermal compound using diamond. Silver has a respectable thermal conductivity at: 429W/m K. Diamond on the other hand has a thermal conductivity of 900-2320 W/m K. So worst case scenario we double performance, and best case is roughly a 5x multiplier. The folks over at Recommendedspec.com have put together a article showing you how to make your own!
Submission + - Hushmail handing over user emails to police 1
Stony Stevenson writes: A court document in a drug smuggling case has shown that the private email service Hushmail has been cooperating with police in handing over user emails. Hushmail claims to offer unreadable email as it uses PGP encryption technology and a company specific key management system that it says will ensure only the sender and recipient can read the emails. However it seems the Canadian company has been divulging keys to the American authorities.
Submission + - Sign a petition to keep science pure
An anonymous reader writes: The Dewey Decimal system categorizes Intelligent Design ("ID") with science books in bookstores and libraries (WHAT!??). There is in the Dewey Decimal Classification, for example, Category 215 — Science and Religion — that would be more suitable. There is a petition to the U.S. Library of Congress to re-classify ID books into sections other than the hard science section.... you should check it out/ maybe sign it:
http://sciencea2z.com/z_petition_1/
Submission + - Hack your iPhone with a single click
ahijado writes: ""A crew of hackers ... have introduced a one-touch instant jailbreak for both iPhone and iPod touch. The jailbreak opens your iPhone for full disk access and installs Installer.app so you can add pretty much any third party application you like.""
Submission + - Comet lights up the night sky (wikinews.org)
DragonFire1024 writes: "Comet burst visible without telescope. If you've noticed a fuzzy yellowish object at night in the northeast sky, immediately to the left of the constellation Perseus, that's because it is the Comet Holmes which has suddenly got brighter in what scientists say is "absolutely unprecedented" in comet research."
Submission + - MS OneCare causing Windows PCs to reboot?
ta bu shi da yu writes: "Sometime ago, Microsoft was accused of changing Windows Update (WU) to automatically download and install updates, even if users changed the auto-update setting off. This was denied by Microsoft.
Well, it appears that they were right. Windows Update doesn't automatically install patches. According to Windows Secrets the culprit is MS OneCare. It appears that it automatically switches the updates to automatic without any warning to the end user.
Given the problems with OneCare (deleting mail, flunking anti-virus tests and now this issue), is it really worth the effort?"
Submission + - Officials Accidently Crash RC Boat into Wrong Boat
coastal984 writes: NBC12 in Richmond, Virginia recently reported how officials from the Department of Game & Inland Fisheries, in a first-ever test of crashing two full-sized boats into each other, accidently hit the wrong boat — instead of the two remotely controlled vessels colliding, they missed, and one veered off and hit a manned chase boat. From the article: "At first the two [remote control] boats were heading straight at each other. Then something went wrong." No people were hurt, but a 225 horsepower engine is a new reef for the fishies at the bottom of the James River.
The article has video showing the crash from two different angles.
Submission + - Magnetic 'snakes' for storage devices?
Roland Piquepaille writes: "According to a weekly digest from the American Physical Society (APS), physicists at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) have found that under certain conditions, magnetic particles could form magnetic 'snakes' able to control fluids. According to the researchers, this 'magnetic self-assembly phenomena may be used to make the next generation of magnetic recording media or transparent conductors based on self-assembled conducting networks of magnetic micro-particles.' By digging further inside ANL labs, it seems apparent that storage devices based on these magnetic 'snakes' will not appear on the market before a long time. This overview contains many additional details not present in the APS snippet, including pictures of these magnetic 'snakes.'"
Submission + - Geeks give the ultimate digital care package (tgdaily.com)
not5150 writes: "Geeks are helping overseas troops by sending the ultimate digital care package. Dubbed 'The Traveling Terabyte', the package is basically a bunch of drives in a USB enclosure, all packed inside of a Pelican case. Containing music, movies and even educational material the Traveling Terabyte gives soldiers and Marines a digital slice of home."
Submission + - PS3 DVD quality is on par with a $5000 processor (firingsquad.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: FiringSquad just posted an article with 1080p .PNG screenshots comparing the PlayStation 3 against a $5000 Silicon Optix Realta HQV based video processor. Surprisingly, the PS3 is almost as good as the dedicated processor in terms of image quality and handily outperforms both ATI and NVIDIA HTPC solutions.
Submission + - SHA-1 cracking on a budget (hackaday.com)
cloude-pottier writes: One thing that is always amazing is what people manage to pull off on absolutely minimal resources. One enterprising individual went on eBay and found boards with more than half a dozen Virtex II Pro FPGAs, nurse them back to life and build a SHA-1 cracker with two of the boards. This is an excellent example of recycling, as these were originally a part of a Thompson Grass Valley HDTV broadcast system. As a part of the project, the creator wrote tools designed to graph the relationships between components using JTAG as to make reverse engineering the organization of the FPGAs on the board more apparent. More details can be seen on the actual project page. If an individual is able to pull this off for under 500 dollars, it almost makes one wonder what resources the government has available to them to do the same thing...
Submission + - 360 Degree Light Field Display
Gary writes: "Designed by USC's Institute for Creative Technologies the Interactive 360 Degree Light Field Display won the Best Emerging Technology Award at SIGGRAPH 2007. The system is capable of producing 3D images which can be viewed by multiple users. The display uses a standard programmable graphics card to render over 5,000 images per second of interactive 3D graphics, projecting 360-degree views with 1.25 degree separation up to 20 updates per second. As the video shows it is capable of Star Wars styled Holographic Style Projections."
