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Censorship

Submission + - How to silence free speech silently (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by
quizzicus
quizzicus writes: "The Washington Post writes today about a sensitive White House document detailing how to screen for, silence, and remove protesters who show up at the President's public appearances. Obtained by an ACLU subpoena in the Rank v. Jenkins case, the Presidential Advance Manual (pdf) lays out strategies such as searching audience members at the door for hidden protest material, strategically placing "rally squads" throughout the crowd to intercept and shout down hecklers, and forcefully removing dissenters who cannot be squelched. The manual advises, however, that staff should "decide if the solution would cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone.""
Wii

Submission + - Wii caught the xbox 360

Submitted by LucidLion
LucidLion writes: As reported here and according to the vgchartz, in less than a year the Wii has overtaken the XBox 360 and has become the fasted selling console ever. From the article:

The news marks the first time that Nintendo has been the leader in both the home console and handheld markets since 1994 when the company's Super NES and Game Boy lines reigned supreme. Currently, the DS and Wii are the top two selling system's in the industry.
With the way it's selling, any drought in Wii games probably won't last long.
Software

Submission + - debugger displaying variable values in source code (michaelpundit.com)

Submitted by
Michael Lyubomirskiy
Michael Lyubomirskiy writes: "www.michaelpundit.com describes work done on several UI related inventions, most notably C# logging debugger that displays variables values inside source code and could potentially be extended with lots of other cool features, like using SQL queries to search through the accumulated log. Ideally, though not yet :), it would display something like this, except with color highlighting

String strY_uninit : "prev" = "prev";
if(canDebugByLogging(str1_"so ", str2_"easily")_true)
    strY_"prev" : "100%" = ((bother_70 + otherwise_30)_100 + "%")_"100%";
Full source code is published under permissive license. Other highlights include some Javascript hacks for improving webpage readability (called TiggerScript because it let's you pounce :) all over the page with some keystrokes) and several articles with reasonably original but not yet implemented ideas."
United States

Submission + - US Department of Defense Stops Religious Crusade? (latimes.com)

Submitted by
Banan Tarr
Banan Tarr writes: "The LA Times reports here that the United States Department of Defense has put a stop to the Pentagon-supported "Military Crusade" — a program created by a fundamentalist Christian ministry called Operation Straight Up. This comes a week after the Military Religious Freedom Foundation discovered intent to distribute "Freedom Packages" to US sodliers in Iraq. What were in these packages? Bibles, written in English and Arabic, and an apocalyptic computer game in which the main characters were "Sodliers for Christ". These packages were never delivered. But could they be a sign of things truly being out of hand in today's administration? Or is this an exmaple of checks and balances at work?"
Announcements

Submission + - Plone 3.0 released (plone.org)

Submitted by
dracvl
dracvl writes: "After a year of development, the Plone Foundation announced the release of Plone 3.0 today. Plone is Python's leading content management system, and this is a major milestone for open source content management systems. Recent converts to Plone include Novell, Akamai... and the CIA. Major new features in this release is pervasive versioning, automatic locking, links that never break and ajax-powered inline editing. The list of features is a good start if you're wondering what it can do."
Censorship

Submission + - WordPress blocked by Turkey to appease creationist (wordpress.com)

Submitted by
John Hawks
John Hawks writes: "The entire WordPress domain has been blocked by the Turkish government, and the WordPress blog carries a reaction. The blockage comes at the request of Adnan Oktar, a.k.a. Harun Yahya, best known as one of the foremost international promoters of creationism. Oktar alleges that WordPress sites have defamed him, and has demanded satisfaction. The Scientific American blog has more details on this matter and the news earlier this week that ScienceBlogger P. Z. Myers has been sued for libel."
Announcements

Submission + - The aerogel revolution is almost upon us (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by GnarlyDoug
GnarlyDoug writes: Aerogels, nicknamed liquid smoke, are basically nanofoam. Imagine a material with such a low density that it is transparent yet extremely tough, and such a good insulator that even asbestos cannot compare. It also has a massive surface area, making it perfect as a filter and purifier. Aerogels have been around since the 1930s but they have mainly been laboratory curiosities because they were so brittle and so expensive to make. It seems that has finally changed and that aerogels are about to become mainstream.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - A Do-It-Yourself Segway! (mit.edu)

Submitted by
Cam T
Cam T writes: "I've been working with other high school students and four MIT students to build a do-it-yourself version of the two-wheel balancing segway scooters. Check it out!"
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - ESA Altered Wikipedia Entries on Mod Chips (gamepolitics.com)

Submitted by sesshomaru
sesshomaru writes: Game Politics is reporting that the Entertainment Software Association has been editing Wikipedia entries on modchips and abandonware so that they will be more favorable to their point of view. In other words, they've edited them so that any discussion of legal or moral gray areas are removed and the Wikipedia entries say that these things are illegal, period. Here's a link to the Game Politics article:

ESA Altered Wikipedia Entries on Mod Chips, Abandonware

Links to the alterations made in the article can be found in the article, and thanks to Wikipedia Scanner for uncovering this scandal.
Windows

Submission + - Stop the Windows Vista Features and Services Harve (softpedia.com)

Submitted by ela_gervaise
ela_gervaise writes: There is a constant flow of communication between Windows Vista and Microsoft. A collection of features and services across Microsoft's latest desktop operating system exchange data with locations on the Internet, including those belonging to the Redmond company.
United States

Submission + - We do not welcome our Orwellian overlords.

Submitted by
DigitalReverend
DigitalReverend writes: "The headline "Smile ... or Else" In an article from MSNBC, Patti Davis writes about a new type of security being added to airports where security guards who have studied in "micro-expressions" are knowns as Behavior Detection Officers and are watching passengers' facial expressions to determine if they present a potential threat.

"Apparently, these Behavior Detection Officers work in pairs. One scenario is that an officer might move in to "help" a passenger retrieve their belongings after they've been screened. And then the officer will ask where the passenger is headed. If the passenger's reaction sets off alarm bells in the officer's well-trained mind, another officer will move in and detain them."

Have we finally gone too far or did we pass that mark a while back?"
Portables

Submission + - Are laptop batteries the next "printer ink"

Submitted by Quixote
Quixote writes: Sometime back I bought a Dell Inspiron laptop because Dell was offering a very good deal on it. A few weeks after the warranty expired, the battery suddenly died. It was as if the battery was non-existent: the laptop would shutdown if unplugged even if the battery had been in the laptop the whole time. When plugged in, the battery charging light would keep flashing. This seemed quite puzzling, since just days before this, the battery used to give me a good 2 hours or so of use.

Searching around on the web to see if the flashing lights meant anything, I came across this page. It seems like lots of people have been reporting the same symptoms: just after the warranty expires, the battery mysteriously "dies". Even the Dell forums are replete with posts from unhappy users.

The solution from Dell is: buy a new battery. But they aren't cheap: a Dell one runs you about $100.

I know I should have known better than buying a Dell (cue the "Dude!" jokes). But this begs a bigger question: is this legal (it certainly doesn't seem ethical)? How many of these (working) batteries end up in the landfill? Have laptop batteries become the next "printer ink", forcing us to keep buying new ones?
Math

Submission + - AES may be breakable (and/or have a trapdoor!) (iacr.org)

Submitted by nodrog
nodrog writes: A preprint at the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) claims that AES may be susceptible to a new cryptanalysis technique. From the article abstract: — We describe a new simple but more powerful form of linear cryptanalysis. It appears to break AES (and undoubtably other cryptosystems too, e.g. SKIPJACK). The break is "nonconstructive," i.e. we make it plausible (e.g. prove it in certain approximate probabilistic models) that a small algorithm for quickly determining AES-256 keys from plaintext-ciphertext pairs exists — but without constructing the algorithm. Even if this break breaks due to the underlying models inadequately approximating the real world, we explain how AES still could contain "trapdoors" which would make cryptanalysis unexpectedly easy for anybody who knew the trapdoor. If AES's designers had inserted such a trapdoor, it could be very easy for them to convince us of that. But if none exist, then it is probably infeasibly difficult for them to convince us of that.

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