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Spam

Submission + - FBI: More spam prosecutions coming (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The FBI has 70 active investigations into spam-related crimes, and the Internet community can expect many more prosecutions from spam and botnet activities in the coming months. Those were the two main messages delivered today by the FBI at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Spam Summit in Washington, D.C. In addition to targeting "bot herders," criminals who control botnets, the DOJ will begin targeting "bot brokers," the people who negotiate the sale of botnet resources. "We're going to start pegging them with some criminal liability. There is a lot of money getting exchanged here," A DOJ executive said. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1748 5"
Privacy

Submission + - Credit industry opposes anti-ID theft method (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
athloi
athloi writes: "Lawmakers across the country — pushed by consumer advocacy groups — are mounting a counterattack. They have passed laws that allow consumers to freeze their credit, a surefire way to prevent thieves from opening new accounts or obtaining a mortgage in a consumer's name. Under a freeze, a consumer cuts off all access to his credit report and score, even his own. All lenders require that information, so no one can borrow money in the consumer's name until he or she lifts the freeze. It's simple, and it works. So, of course, it's under threat from the Consumer Data Industry Association, which represents the Big Three credit bureaus. They make millions gathering and selling consumer data. Freezes cut into that business.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070703/cm_usato day/aweaponagainstidentitytheft"
Censorship

Submission + - "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" student loses SCOTUS r (go.com)

Submitted by Fudgefactor7
Fudgefactor7 writes: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday that students can face limits on their rights to free speech. Schools can rein in students' speech if it can be interpreted as promoting illegal drug use, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court's opinion. The case stemmed from an incident in January 2002 in which a crowd of students, townspeople and teachers gathered on a public street in Alaska across from a high school to watch the Olympic torch relay pass in front of them as part of a parade in support of the upcoming Winter Olympic Games. Student Joseph Frederick wanted to make a statement about his First Amendment rights in front of the television crews covering the event. As the crowd thickened, he unfurled a banner with the message "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."
The Media

Submission + - Congress considering more low power FM stations (reclaimthemedia.org)

Submitted by Skapare
Skapare writes: According to a ReclaimTheMedia article The Local Community Radio Act of 2007 [PDF] would remove the artificial restrictions imposed on LPFM by a 2000 law passed at the urging of corporate radio giants and NPR, claiming that small community stations would interfere with the signals of larger stations. If passed, this bill will pave the way for educational groups, nonprofits, unions, schools and local governments to launch new local radio stations across the country. More coverage is at Prometheous Radio Project, Free Press, and Expand Low-Power FM. More info via Google.
Google

Submission + - Google Sends Disgruntled Blogger Superman Cape

Submitted by
rulesaremyenemy
rulesaremyenemy writes: "Google's sense of humor strikes once again:

"While at SXSW, I tried out the new Google Transit service. I was far away from the hotel and wanted to find an efficient way to get back. Well, Google got me close, then expected me to cross an eight-lane highway on foot. Um, no. I had to explore for a long time to find a way to get across the damn thing and back to my hotel. I bitched at my blog.
Today, I got a package from Google at my workplace. At first, I saw the hand-written "Google" return address and thought "anthrax", but figured, what the hell. I ripped it open. I was treated to the single greatest customer service experience I had ever had. Enclosed was a hand-written note from Joe Hughes at Google. The note said:

Dear Superman, Reading your blog post about Google Transit at SXSW made us wonder if you were losing your powers — I mean, how hard could it be to leap over a simple 8-lane highway intersection, man of steel? We've enclosed a new cape — hopefully it will help you find your powers again.
...seriously, though, Adam, we're sorry that Google Transit sent you on such an expedition, and we wanted to let you know that we've since improved our routing, so that it returns more plausible walking sections at the start & end of transit routes.

Cheers, Joe Hughes Google Transit"

(Picture of the Cape and Letter on Flickr)"
Announcements

Submission + - Stable Open Source NTFS After 12 Years of Work

Submitted by
irgu
irgu writes: "Open source NTFS development started in 1995 by Martin von Loewis under Linux, which was taken over by Anton Altaparmakov in 2000. Two years ago Apple hired Altaparmakov to work on Mac OS X and made a deal with the team to relicense the code and return the new one, soonest in the spring of 2008. But the team also continued the work and Szabolcs Szakacsits announced the read/write NTFS-3G driver for beta testing last year. Only half year passed and NTFS-3G reached the stable status and has been already ported to FreeBSD, Mac OS X, BeOS, Haiku, 64-bit and big-endian architectures, and new CPU's!"
Media

Submission + - Refuting the misinformation about Matt Bandy

Submitted by
Rachel Alexander
Rachel Alexander writes: "Defense In Child Porn Case Distorts the Truth

There was a long discussion here a couple of weeks ago about child pornography and the prosecution of Matthew Bandy by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. In response to the misinformation that has been spread by the media, the Bandy family and their crisis management firm, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office has released a lengthy report, including numerous exhibits regarding the technical aspects of the case. This case was not about adult pornography, nor was it about a computer virus surreptitiously downloading child pornography to your computer — as the media, family and defense counsel have portrayed it. The prosecution of then 16-year old Matt Bandy was about an investigation that yielded overwhelming evidence of the defendant viewing, downloading, uploading and sharing pornographic images of children being sexually abused, and burning them to a CD. Fox News posted a rebuttal from our office here, and the full report can be found here."
Media (Apple)

Submission + - DVD jon on Job's "give up DRM if I could"

Submitted by
Whiney Mac Fanboy
Whiney Mac Fanboy writes: ""Dvd" Jon Johansen has posted several sceptical blog entries reacting to Steve Job's blog posting about DRM. One post questions Job's misuse of statistics that attempts to prove consumers aren't tied to iPods through ITMS.

Many iPod owners have never bought anything from the iTunes Store. Some have bought hundreds of songs. Some have bought thousands. At the 2004 Macworld Expo, Steve revealed that one customer had bought $29,500 worth of music.
The other question's the DRM-free in a heartbeat claim. There are apparantly, many Indie artists who would love to sell DRM-free music on iTunes, but Apple will not allow them.

It should not take Apple's iTunes team more than 2-3 days to implement a solution for not wrapping content with FairPlay when the content owner does not mandate DRM. This could be done in a completely transparent way and would not be confusing to the users.
"
Censorship

Submission + - Congress Hears From Muzzled Scientists

Submitted by BendingSpoons
BendingSpoons writes: More than 120 scientists across seven federal agencies have been pressured to remove the phrases "global warming" and "climate change" from various documents. The documents include press releases and, more importantly, communications with congress. Evidence of this sort of political interference has been largely annecdotal to date, but is now detailed in a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings on this issue yesterday; the hearing began by Committee members, including most Republicans, stating that global warming was happening and greenhouse gas emissions from human activity were largely to blame.

The OGR hearings presage a landmark moment in climate change research: the release of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC report, drafted by 1,250 scientists and reviewed by an additional 2,500 scientists, is expected to state that "there is a 90% chance humans are responsible for climate change" — up from the 2001 report's 66% chance. It probably won't make for comfortable bedtime reading; "The future is bleak", said scientists.
Windows

Submission + - Vista DRM Cracked by Security Researcher

Submitted by WillRIAAHaveMeKilledForReportingThis
WillRIAAHaveMeKilledForReportingThis writes: Security researcher Alex Ionescu claims to have successfully bypassed the much discussed DRM protection in Windows Vista, called "Protected Media Path" (PMP), which is designed to seriously degrade the playback quality of any video and audio running on systems with hardware components not explicitly approved by Microsoft.

The bypass of the DRM protection was in turn performed by breaking the Driver Signing / PatchGuard protection in the new operating system.

Alex is now quite nervous about what an army of lawyers backed by draconian copyright laws could do to him if he released the details, but he claims to be currently looking into the details of safely releasing his details about this at the moment though.

PS. It's really about time for Slashdot to add a "DRM" section.
Education

Submission + - Changing to a career in science?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I'm a 37-year-old lawyer considering a career change into scientific research (the specific field is not relevant to my questions). I got into the legal profession for all the wrong reasons, and I would prefer a career doing something that excites and challenges me, even if the money isn't great. This will require significant educational retooling, including 5-6 years in a PhD program, so I need to look before I leap.

Have other Slashdot readers made similar transitions? For those already doing scientific research as their career, what have been the high and low points of your education and career? Do you foresee any problems for an "older" PhD candidate?
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Norway Outlaws iTunes

Submitted by haddieman
haddieman writes: While many people are getting more and more annoyed at DRM, Norway actually did something about it.

FTA: "Good intentions, questionable execution. European legislators have been giving DRM considerable attention for a while, but Norway has actually gone so far as to declare that Apple's iTunes store is illegal under Norwegian law. The crux of the issue is that the Fairplay DRM that is at the heart of the iTunes/iPod universe doesn't work with anything else, meaning that if you want access to the cast iTunes library, you have to buy an iPod."
Media

Submission + - 911 Calls Reveal Dangers of Media Consolidation

Submitted by BendingSpoons
BendingSpoons writes: Five years ago, a 112-car train derailed outside of Minot, North Dakota. Over 240,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia leaked out of the car, resulting in one death and the hospitalization of hundreds. Why is this news? Because newly released 911 tapes reveal a breakdown in Minot's emergency broadcasting — a breakdown that some are attributing to media consolidation. When panicked residents called emergency dispatch, they were advised to tune into KCJB, the designated local emergency broadcaster. However, KCJB — along with Minot's five other commercial channels — was owned by Clear Channel; the music was piped in from out of state, and no one was in the station to respond to calls. 911 callers were therefore directed to radio stations that provided no emergency information. The problem of "local" news stations unable to transmit information about local emergencies is now raising concerns about both national security and media consolidation.

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