_Lint_ - Slashdot User

Submission + - First Amendment Fight Due To Facebook Incident (afmediagroup.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23, 2012 @11:00AM

An anonymous reader writes: While it may not be surprising that something you post on your Facebook wall could get you in legal trouble, it may surprise you that a judge has ordered a man to post something on his wall or to face jail time.

According to court records in Cincinnatti, Ohio, Mark Byron was charged with and found guilty of civil domestic violence against his wife, Elizabeth Byron in June 2011. Elizabeth was granted a temporary protection order and primary custody of their son. Mark was allowed supervised visits with their son twice a week. He has appealed that conviction, and the appeal is still processing. A divorce between Mark and Elizabeth is also in the works.

Submission + - Damaged US passport chip strands travelers (kdvr.com)

Submitted by

caseih

on Tuesday February 21, 2012 @12:30PM

caseih writes: "Damaging the embedded chip in your passport is now grounds for denying you the ability to travel in at least one airport in the US. Though the airport can slide the passport through the little number reader as easily as they can wave it in front of an RFID reader, they chose to deny a young child access to the flight, in essence denying the who family. The child had accidentally sat on his passport, creasing the cover, and the passport appeared worn. The claim has been made that breaking the chip in the passport shows that you disrespect the privilege of owning a passport, and that the airport was justified in denying this child from using the passport."

Comment Re:Perhaps the police could use this (Score 1) 354

by _Lint_ on Friday February 17, 2012 @05:17PM (#39079379) Attached to: How Companies Learn Your Secrets

They do. A decade ago, I saw a demo of some software developed for Brazil, which predicted likely locations for illegal poaching, logging, and mining based on past illegal activity, geographic features, and anything that looked like a road or hidden runway (even if the road or runway wasn't anywhere near the site).

Submission + - DARPA researches 'Avatar' Surrogates (ieee.org) 1

Submitted by kgeiger on Friday February 17, 2012 @01:20PM

kgeiger writes: Feeling blue? DARPA is funding a program to investigate the feasibility of battlefield cyborg-surrogates:

"In its 2012 budget, DARPA has decided to pour US $7 million into the 'Avatar Project' whose goal is the following: 'develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it to act as the soldier’s surrogate.'"

Power and bandwidth constraints aside, what could go wrong? Chinese hackers swooping in and commandeering one's army? Gives new meaning to the question "Where's Waldo?"

Submission + - How To Make Digital Albums Unique: Generate a New One With Every Download (vice.com)

Submitted by

pigrabbitbear

on Friday February 17, 2012 @01:10PM

pigrabbitbear writes: "Despite what the recording industry may say, it doesn’t matter how many times you copy a digital file — nothing about the original is being “stolen” as a result of the duplication. In some ways, it’s great that physical media has given way to digital distribution: Expenses have shrunk to the cost of maintaining a website or allowing a digital marketplace to have a cut of the profits. But if digital files are identical and can be infinitely replicated, how can they still be worth anything? A clever answer has recently come from one electronic music ensemble: Make music that generates differently every time it’s downloaded."

Submission + - EA Launches Mass Effect 3 Into Space (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by

redletterdave

on Friday February 17, 2012 @12:15PM

redletterdave writes: "Bioware thinks Mass Effect 3 — coming to PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on March 6 — is out of this world, and thanks to the company's latest viral marketing campaign, now it truly will be. Publisher Electronic Arts will launch copies of the final installment of the highly-acclaimed space opera into space using weather balloons, which will be released in New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, London, Berlin, and Paris. EA will fit each copy of the game with a GPS tracking device so fans will be able to track their return to Earth on masseffect.com. Once the games finally land back on Earth, fans can go find the games to keep for themselves, which will give them an opportunity to play the long-awaited finale to the Mass Effect series weeks before the game hits stores."

Submission + - Religious Americans Enjoy Higher Wellbeing (gallup.com) 2

Submitted by

ZombieBraintrust

on Friday February 17, 2012 @11:07AM

ZombieBraintrust writes: "An analysis of more than 676,000 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index interviews conducted in 2011 and 2010 finds that Americans who are the most religious have the highest levels of wellbeing. The statistically significant relationship between religiousness and wellbeing holds up after controlling for numerous demographic variables."

Submission + - Jotform Returns - Government Refuses to Explain

Submitted by __aamdvq1432 on Friday February 17, 2012 @10:57AM

__aamdvq1432 writes: From Techdirt, US Returns Jotform.com Domain; Still Refuses To Say What Happened.

The scary bit is that, when Jotform asked GoDaddy (GD) why the site was down, GD sent them the Secret Service (SS), who claimed to be "too busy" to talk to the Jotform folks.

Still no explanation by GD or the SS, even though Jotform is back

Hmm, "GD" and "SS" indeed.

Submission + - Heartland Doc likley a fake (wattsupwiththat.com)

Submitted by IIJamesII on Thursday February 16, 2012 @03:12PM

IIJamesII writes: Andrew Revkin, one of the first to publicly post documents leaked from the Heartland Institute, before confirming their authenticity, admits that they may have been altered or faked. http://blog.heartland.org/2012/02/andrew-revkin-finds-journalism-religion-after-posting-fraudulent-document/

Interestingly, Revkin refused to publish the climategate emails because he said he respected privacy.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/private-climate-conversations-on-display/

Alan Watts dissects the fakery of one key document here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/notes-on-the-fake-heartland-document/

Submission + - MPAA Opposes SFLC and EFF Petitions (copyright.gov)

Submitted by

jiny

on Thursday February 16, 2012 @11:36AM

jiny writes: "The MPAA and RIAA have responded to SFLC and EFF's petitions to expand DMCA exemptions for jailbreaking. The recording industry groups claim, among other things, that 'access controls increase the availability of copyrighted works' and that jailbreaking might break the crippleware business model."

Submission + - School determines child lunch unhealth, Send home bill instead (theblaze.com) 3

Submitted by halfEvilTech on Thursday February 16, 2012 @11:27AM

halfEvilTech writes: A North Carolina mom is irate after her four-year-old daughter returned home late last month with an uneaten lunch the mother had packed for the girl earlier that day. But she wasn’t mad because the daughter decided to go on a hunger strike. Instead, the reason the daughter didn‘t eat her lunch is because someone at the school determined the lunch wasn’t healthy enough and sent it back home. What was wrong with the lunch? That’s still a head-scratcher because it didn’t contain anything egregious: a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice. But for the inspector on hand that day, it didn’t meet the healthy requirements.

Comment Re:It's all the customers' fault... (Score 1) 406

by _Lint_ on Wednesday February 15, 2012 @04:47PM (#39050103) Attached to: AT&T On Data Throttling: Blame Yourselves

"...for trying to use the product they bought."

Seriously. My wife and I have the family plan, and it works well for us. I lost my non-smartphone, and wanted to replace it with a cheap phone. I don't text, and I have no interest in paying an additional $500/year on data plans ($250 per phone, per year). They were very pushy trying to convince me I needed a smartphone and data plan. Worse than any car dealership I've ever been to.

Submission + - FTC warns on background checking mobile apps (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday February 07, 2012 @01:35PM

coondoggie writes: "The Federal Trade Commission this week said it sent letters to six unidentified mobile applications makers warning them that their background screening apps may be violating federal statutes. Specifically the FTC said if the app makers have reason to believe their background reporting apps are being used for employment screening, housing, credit, or other similar purposes, they must comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act which is supposed to protect consumer privacy and ensure that the information supplied by consumer reporting agencies is accurate."

Submission + - Apple Could Lose $1.6 Billion in iPad Lawsuit (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by

redletterdave

on Tuesday February 07, 2012 @01:16PM

redletterdave writes: "Proview Technology, which currently uses the 'iPad' name on several of its products including computer monitors, stands to win $1.6 billion and an apology from Apple for allegedly infringing upon Proview's trademarked name to use on its bestselling tablet. Proview International, which owns subsidiaries Proview Technology in Shenzhen and Proview Electronics in Taiwan, originally registered the name "iPad" in Taiwan in 2000 and mainland China in 2001. Proview eventually sued Apple in 2011, and even though the Cupertino-based company retaliated with a counter-suit of its own, Apple lost the case in local Chinese courts. Depending on the court's findings, Apple could be fined anywhere from $38 million to the $1.6 billion that Proview is seeking. In addition to the money, Proview also wants Apple to apologize. 'We have prepared well for a long-term legal battle,' said one of Proview's lawyers."

Submission + - Facebook Censoring links to free e-books

Submitted by

gr8_phk

on Tuesday February 07, 2012 @12:44PM

gr8_phk writes: "Today Google is celebrating Charles Dickens birthday on their main page. You can download many of his works legally from Project Gutenberg since the copyrights have expired. However, you apparently can not post a link to Gutenberg on Facebook. If you try you'll be greeted with an error message which will go away if you remove the url from your post. Today is not the first time I've tried this. Is Facebook blocking links to the competition of places like Amazon? Why can I post a link to Amazon and not Gutenberg, and why does Facebook lie to me about it?"

Slashdot Top Deals