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Security

Submission + - IP geolocation can now find you to 500 yards! (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: A new IP location method accurate to a few hundred meters has been developed using a series of refinements that can pinpoint a user's physical location at street level. It starts out using servers with a known location to triangulate the rough position using ping time. Then it uses a route trace to find shared routers and so work out a theoretic ping time. The final stage is based on finding servers that are even more local to the target and using the same route trace method to pin the location down to 500 yards.
This all works without the permission of the target and the only way around it is to use a proxy server. The possible uses of this are obvious and include targeted advertising and visits from the authorities.

Comment Re:Wow ... (Score 1) 220

by thehostiles (#35648044) Attached to: Mobile Phone May Rot Your Bones

some are and some aren't. But I definitely think a change in bone makeup would be an easy thing to examine if the researchers had any conviction that it was caused by a change in bone chemistry.

Is a biopsy too much to ask?

Comment Re:Wow ... (Score 1) 220

by thehostiles (#35647478) Attached to: Mobile Phone May Rot Your Bones

so, if I may ask... What exactly do you think causes these "vibrations"
The cell phone's vibration setting? The radio signalling? aliens?

If it is the vibration setting, then I think we'd have more to worry about with ahem, personal massage devices.

Perhaps you should pull yours out so you aren't so distracted while you type your responses.
United States

Submission + - Meet 'Future You.' Like What You See?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The WSJ reports that computer scientists, economists, neuroscientists and psychologists are teaming up to find innovative ways of turning impulsive spenders into patient savers and one way to shock Americans into saving more for their retirement is software that lets users stare into a camera in a virtual-reality laboratory and see an image staring back of how they will look in the year 2057. By enabling the young to see themselves as they will be when they are old, virtual-reality technology can transform their urge to spend for today into a willingness to save for tomorrow because to the extent that people can more vividly imagine how badly they will feel in the future with little to no retirement savings, they can be motivated to save more money now. In one test experimental subjects who saw a persuasive visual analog of a 70-year old version of themselves by morphing the shape and texture of his avatar to simulate the aging process reported they would save twice as much as those who didn't (PDF). "An employee's ID photo could be age-morphed and placed on the benefits section of the company's website," says Dan Goldstein of London Business School. "From there, we're just a few clicks and a few minutes away from someone making a lasting decision that can be worth thousands [of dollars].""
Botnet

Submission + - MS Takes Down Rustock Botnet, 50% of World Spam (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Officials at Microsoft, working with researchers at FireEye and the U. of Washington, have taken down the notorious Rustock botnet, which was responsible for half of worldwide spam.
Rustock has been a major player in the botnet ecosystem for several years and has been a focus of a lot of attention from both law enforcement and researchers. It was a key cog in the global spam and malware economic machine and experts say that Rustock was responsible for sending billions of junk emails a day that pushed a laundry list of garbage products, mainly pharmaceuticals. Estimates put the amount of spam from Rustock at roughly half of the worldwide junk email volume.

In February, Microsoft filed documents in federal court laying out the structure of the Rustock botnet and explaining in detail what kinds of activities the botnet was responsible for and the economic effect of the botnet's operations. The company sued a number of unknown parties as well. The takedown occurred on Wednesday, as U.S. Marshals went into several hosting providers' data centers and seized the command and control servers that ran the Rustock network

Submission + - WikiLeaks cash-for-votes exposé rocks Indian (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by mage7
mage7 writes: While the world's attention seems to be focused on the events unfolding in Japan and the Middle-east, Indian headlines are being dominated by the latest WikiLeaks' revelations.
The newly leaked cable (dated 17 July 2008) suggests that India's ruling Congress party bribed MPs, in order to secure their votes for a controversial nuclear deal between India and the US. Among other details, It describes how a senior Congress aide showed a US embassy official "chests of cash" allegedly containing about $25 million to pay off MPs ahead of the vote. Another Congress insider told a US official about how the Minister of Commerce and Industry formerly "could only offer small planes as bribes.....now he can pay for votes with jets."
The Courts

Submission + - Copyright Wiretaps are Hollywood's "PATRIOT (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ars is reporting that the CCIA is calling the copyright wiretaps requested by the IP Czar 'Hollywood's PATRIOT Act'. For those who don't remember, IP Czar Victoria Espinel recently wrote a report calling for more charges of felony copyright infringement under the NET Act, as well as felony charges for illegal web streaming, authorization for the use of wiretaps in going after copyright infringement cases, and several other measures. In short, this means that the copyright cops are coming online.
Piracy

Submission + - Media Piracy Doesn't Fund Mob, Terrorists (arstechnica.com) 2

Submitted by
shoutingloudly
shoutingloudly writes: "The media industry keeps trying to paint a link between commercial media piracy and the mob and/or terrorists. As with so much of their "research," the methods have been sorely lacking. Now, a major study by the Social Science Research Council--a collection of genuine scholars--has found just the opposite. The report "costs" $8 (noncommercial), $2000 (commercial readers), or nothing (developing countries, Canada, and anyone who follows the extra link)."
Government

Submission + - Would you be willing to be tracked with a "digital (clickz.com)

Submitted by
whencanistop
whencanistop writes: ""Using new products from companies like BlueCava and Ringleader Digital, advertisers will be able to link and track individual consumers on their mobile phones, desktop PCs, tablet devices, games consoles, TVs — even their cars — and serve them ads based on activity across those devices. They will do so using a process often referred to as device fingerprinting, an emerging device identification technique which could eventually replace the cornerstone of online measurement and data collection, the cookie." according to Clickz. As I've been posting on my blog recently, this just goes to show that Government needs to regulate data use, not data collection."
Hardware

Submission + - Net Neutrality Debate in Europe Is ‘Over&rsq (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "Is throwing net neutrality under the bus the price of a modern European telecom network? While the debate over a free and open Internet has raged in the U.S., it appears in Europe that the argument is largely over; net neutrality lost. What we are now arguing about is where to draw the line, not should we draw one at all. The debate spans a spectrum that on the one end says all bits are created equal and free and should be treated thus, through the mid-point that says telcos should be able to manage services on their own networks (prioritizing some kinds of packets over others) and offer so-called tiered services (the more you pay, the better the service), right over to the view espoused by Hannes Ametsreiter of Telekom Austria, that it is my network so I say what happens on it. In the U.S., this has assumed the role of a debate over free speech. In Europe, it has been rather more prosaic."

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