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United States

Submission + - Lakota Sioux Declare Sovereign Nation Status (commondreams.org)

Submitted by
eternal1001
eternal1001 writes: "Totally, Unbelievably AMAZING! Why isn't this in the major news outlets? This is massive international news, and I had a heck of a time searching for details on it:

Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status

Threaten Land Liens, Contested Real Estate Over Five State Area in U.S.West Dakota Territory Reverts back to Lakota Control According to U.S., International Law

WASHINGTON, DC — December 20 — Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday's withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.

"This is an historic day for our Lakota people," declared Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota. "United States colonial rule is at its end!""
The Courts

Submission + - FBI Forensic Evidence Discredited

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Washington Post reports that the FBI has abandoned comparative bullet-lead analysis, the technique using chemistry to link crime-scene bullets to ones possessed by suspects on the theory that each batch of lead had a unique elemental makeup, after the National Academy of Sciences said that decades of FBI statements to jurors linking a particular bullet to those found in a suspect's gun or cartridge box were so overstated that such testimony should be considered "misleading under federal rules of evidence." The report added that it found that bullets packaged 15 months apart — a span that assumed separate batches of lead — had the exact composition, potentially undercutting the theory that each batch was unique and that it found that bullets in a single box often had several different lead compositions. NAS says that the flaw is in using a statistical method called chaining (pdf) in which the analyst sequentially compares crime scene bullets to a set of reference bullets assembling them into groups of compositionally indistinguishable bullets which can lead to the formation of artificially large sets of matching bullets. The government has fought releasing the list of the estimated 2,500 cases over three decades in which the FBI performed the flawed analysis."
Christmas Cheer

Submission + - Christmas Lights - 2007 (slashdot.org)

Submitted by martyb
martyb writes: It's that time of year when people go all out trying to put up the most spectacular Christmas light displays. Those that use computerized controllers to synchronize music to the light display can be very impressive, indeed! Slashdot has posted several stories in the past but I could find nothing for this year. What's the best display you've found for 2007? Here's a chance to submit links to your OWN display, too!
United States

Submission + - Lakota Nation withdraws from 150 year old treaties (google.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AFP, Fox News and Others have published a story about leaders of the Lakota indian nation withdrawing from US treaties signed over 150 years ago. Interestingly, they're renouncing their US Citizenship (which could be seriously problematic for them later, should their bid fail), and declaring the formation of their own nation. This new Lakota nation would cover parts of 5 states. As justification for their position, they site article 6 of the US Constitution, and US/International Agreements on the rights of indiginous people made during the Vienna Convention in 1980. Among those taking part in this activity is Russell Means, a well known Indian activist and political leader and actor. All of this brings to mind the less famous of the two "Wounded Knee" incidents; the 1973 Wounded Knee Incident.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - "Oops!" Those dumb mistakes we've all mad 9

Submitted by theotherbastard
theotherbastard writes: I've recently made the step up from Desktop Support to Systems Administration and in my first month on the job I made a change to a server that knocked one of our customer call centers offline for nearly 4 hours. It was the simple mistake of changing the duplex settings on 2 NIC's on 1 server. Needless to say I've learned my lesson on when and how to make even the smallest change to our sensitive systems. Another thing I've learned is that everyone on my team has a story about their first days supporting servers and the disastrous mistakes they've made. I'm curious what stories some fellow /.er's have.
Linuxcare

Submission + - No serious linux speech recognition software?

Submitted by wally66
wally66 writes: I was impressed by the quality of some Windows-based speech recognition packages [1,2] in the more recent past. Having successfully and happily moved to Linux for more than a year now, I miss nothing but a decent speech recognition program to relieve me from typing from time to time. The lack of progress for Linux-based applications in this field is stunning. The last entry in the linux speech-reconition HOW-TO is from 2002 and this is not an indication that the field has matured :-) The rest of the hits that you get when searching the net is not much more up-to-date. I know that there are packages for speech recognition in the default repositories of Ubuntu and other distros, but given the state of Windows-based speech recognition software such as ViaVoice or Dragon Naturally Speaking, they are prehistoric. Am I overlooking something?
Security

Submission + - SquirrelMail Repository Poisoned (beskerming.com)

Submitted by
SkiifGeek
SkiifGeek writes: "Late last week the SquirrelMail team posted information on their site about a compromise to the main download repository for SquirrelMail that resulted in a critical flaw being introduced into two versions of the webmail application (1.4.11 and 1.4.12).

After gaining access to the repository through a release maintainer's compromised account (it is believed), the attackers made a slight modification to the release packages, modifying how a PHP global variable was handled. As a result, it introduced a remote file inclusion bug — leading to an arbitrary code execution risk on systems running the vulnerable versions of SquirrelMail.

The poisoning was identified after it was reported to the SquirrelMail team that there was a difference in MD5 signatures for version 1.4.12.

Version 1.4.13 is now available."
Cellphones

Submission + - The Twitter/T-Mobile Battle (bibleboy.org)

Submitted by
bblboy54
bblboy54 writes: "Starting Sunday December 9th, many T-Mobile customers began having issues sending SMS messages to the Twitter service. Initially this was thought to be a bug but customers began investigating and received very strong e-mail responses from T-Mobile's President's office. On Thursday, AlternaGeek reported the speculation. It was then later confirmed by the emails customers were receiving from T-Mobile and TechCrunch picked up the story. After a huge outcry from the Twitter community, it was just reported by a representative of Twitter that the problem was found to be technical and not political but this is not only after the direct emails from T-Mobile but also Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, announced T-Mobile was blocking Twitter. The motives and actions of what happened are up for debate but, at the very least, T-Mobile owes their customers and explanation for the way they were treated."
Microsoft

Submission + - Dell: You cannot use MS Vol Lic. on Open Source PC (dell.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Dell says you can't use your existing Microsoft Volume Licensing on its line of Open Source notebook computers. They go on to say, "Customers interested in a Microsoft® Windows® solution should purchase a Dell notebook pre-loaded with Windows XP Professional."

What good is volume licensing if you have to buy a computer that already has a license?
Cellphones

Submission + - The $85k mobile phone bill

Submitted by Fozzyuw
Fozzyuw writes: A 22-year-old Canadian oil-field worker, Piotr Staniaszek, was shocked when he received nearly a $85k phone bill for his mobile phone service from Bell Mobility due to using his phone as an internet service for this computer, downloading things such as HD movies.

In an act of "Good Will", Bell Mobility has lowered his phone bill to $3,243, the cost for their best data plan service. However, Mr Staniaskzek said he was going to fight the bill claiming nobody informed him of all the extra charged involved with using the phone for his computers internet service. Also, that the phone company had no reservation at limiting the amount of charges that can occur on his account, despite having his account service suspended in the past for going over $100.

"The thing is, they've cut my phone off for being like $100 over," he told CBC News.
"Here, I'm $85,000 over and nobody bothered to give me a call and tell me what was going on."
Microsoft

Submission + - How Much Unix Does Microsoft Own? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the wake of recent threats from Microsoft that Linux violates its patents, InfoWeek blogger John Foley attempted to find out just exactly how much Unix and open-source code Microsoft actually owns. Microsoft has a historical connection, via Xenix, its 25-year-old Unix clone, and Windows Services for Unix, which includes a Unix subsystem. But the trail quickly gets murky, because ownership of Xenix was transferred to the original SCO in 1987. It's also unclear whether Microsoft's 2004 deal with Sun resulted in any firm patent cross-licenses. Microsoft stonewalled Foley's requests for information, though one PR rep claimed that: "Microsoft has 65 patents in Linux GUIs, 15 patents in e-mail, 42 patents in Linux Kernel, 45 patents in Open Office, and 68 other patents that read on open source." Asks Foley: "Is Microsoft-patented code in Unix?, What Unix technologies does Microsoft continue to develop?, Where is Unix code used in Microsoft's own product line?" If it's threatening litigation, shouldn't Microsoft put up or shut up?
Space

Submission + - Chinese Moon Photo Not Fake, But Not Pristine

Submitted by niko414
niko414 writes: According to a Wired blog “For the last week, rumors have flooded the Net that China's moon photo, posted here and elsewhere, was a fake Thankfully, Planetary Society blogger Emily Lakdawalla has done her homework, rather than rely on insinuation and guesswork. She compared old photos of the moon from NASA's Clementine orbiter with the new photo, and found considerable similarities – they were indeed depicting the same location – but enough differences to prove they were separate photos.”
Robotics

Submission + - Scientist: Computers will use live brains in 10 yr

Submitted by
CaseyGirl
CaseyGirl writes: "It may sound sci-fi but a researcher from the University of Arizona says in 10 to 15 years, we'll have hybrid computers that are part living, organic tissue and part technology. This is from the man who strapped a moth to a robot so the robot now responds to what the moth sees."
Announcements

Submission + - Most well preserved Mummified dinosaur found (joshfink.net)

Submitted by
Josh Fink
Josh Fink writes: "A teenager in North Dakota may have found the world's most well preserved mummified dinosaur, according to scientists. The 67 million year old mummified hadrosaur even has mummified soft tissue such as muscles and skin fossilized, and weighed close to 35 Tons.

"When you actually look at the detail of the skin, the scales themselves are three-dimensional," the Washington Post quoted Paleontologist Phillip Manning of England's University of Manchester. "The arm is breathtaking. It's a three-dimensional arm, you can shake the dinosaur by the hand. It just defies logic that such a remarkable specimen could preserve."

While this is a wonderful find, I am still awaiting the arrival of Jurassic Park where I can see these creatures in person. However, I am not holding my breath."

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