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Submission + - Divorcing couple ordered to share Facebook passwor (theverge.com)

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes: A judge recently ordered a divorcing couple to disclose their Facebook and online dating passwords, but Courtney and Stephen Gallion won't be snooping around each other's accounts: only the attorneys will get the information. The order came after the husband found "useful" information on a shared computer and suspected more was online. It's an unusual application of a fairly standard evidentiary principle to our new ways of interacting online — and although the couple won't actually swap passwords, the Judge still ordered them not to try and impersonate each other online. New technology, same old crazy.
The Courts

Submission + - CA founder still free; former CEO still in prison (computerworld.com)

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: Charles Wang, the founder of CA Inc., is not in prison, but Sanjay Kumar, the former CEO, is serving a 12-year term for fraud, and Don Tennant, editorial director of Computerworld and InfoWorld, is mad as heck about it. The fraud is described by CA itself as "a massive accounting fraud perpetrated by the company's senior-most executives from as far back as the late 1980s through 2001, and their cover-up of that fraud, which lasted through mid-2004." As Tennant said in his Dear Charles letter at the time of Kumar's sentencing: "This isn't right. Sanjay is guilty of some devastatingly poor judgment, but you're the one who shot the illegal performance- enhancing drugs into CA. The Special Litigation Committee of CA's board of directors said it has found that 'fraud pervaded the entire CA organization at every level and was embedded in CA's culture, as instilled by Mr. Wang, almost from the company's inception.' Your fingerprints are on the needle, Charles."
Education

Submission + - Student suspended for website sues

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: A University of Delaware student suspended for a humor website that a fellow student found 'disturbing' has filed a lawsuit alleging that the University violated his First Amendment rights. A separate site (created for this purpose) has more details. From the complaint, "UD makes available its Internet server for students to create web sites with no restrictions on content... As such, UD may not, consistent with the First Amendment, punish any student based on the content of his or her website, even though the content may have an adverse emotional impact on some readers."
Windows

Submission + - High-quality HD content can't be played by Vista (hdtvinfo.eu) 2

Submitted by
DaMan1970
DaMan1970 writes: "Content protection features in Windows Vista from Microsoft are preventing customers from playing high-quality HD audio/video & harming system performance.

Vista requires premium content like HD movies to be degraded in quality when it is sent to high-quality outputs, like DVI. Users will see status codes that say "graphics OPM resolution too high"

http://www.hdtvinfo.eu/news/hd-video-formats/high- quality-hd-content-cant-be-played-by-windows-vista .html

There are ways to bypass the Windows Vista protection by encoding the movies using alternative codecs like X264, or DiVX, which are in fact more effective sometimes then Windows own WMV codec. These codecs are quite common on HD video Bittorrent sites, or Newsgroups."
Linux Business

Submission + - Tech writers spreading FUD about GPLv3 1

Submitted by Tookis
Tookis writes: Tech writers are spreading FUD about GPLv3 because they fear its take up will slow the adoption of Linux, according to this open source writer. "A large number of tech writers — I wouldn't call them journalists and sully my own profession — are fearful that the licence will slow adoption of Linux in the workplace. And that would lead to a lessening of their own importance and influence." http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/13525/1090/
The Internet

Submission + - Government websites are "too complex"

Submitted by
Klaidas
Klaidas writes: "While services like online road tax renewal are very popular, other sites such as HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), are too complex, the report said.
Most people only knew a few key sites and tended to use "transactional services" once or twice a year — like filing income tax returns or renewing their car tax. But other websites were difficult to use, too "text-heavy" and filled with policy material that was irrelevant to the visitor, the report said.
The average central government site had 17,000 pages — roughly equivalent to that of a large department store — yet most of their search engines "often fail to work satisfactorily".
The Conservative chairman of the public accounts committee, Edward Leigh, said it was "disappointing that there had been so little improvement in the quality of government websites since 2002". "Departments have poor information on costs, websites are still hard to navigate and citizens have to wade through masses of irrelevant information to find what they need," he said."
Emulation (Games)

Submission + - The Sinclair ZX Spectrum is 25 years old!

Submitted by Matt
Matt writes: At a press conference at the Churchill Hotel on Friday the 23rd of April 1982, Sir Clive Sinclair revealed to the world his new home computer: the ZX Spectrum. With games such as Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and Atic Atac (to name a few of the many thousands), it was a machine that brought affordable, quality gaming entertainment to the masses. The rubber keyed Spectrum was released in two versions, 16KB and 48KB models. It was powered by a Zilog Z80A CPU at 3.5 Mhz and was designed for use with contemporary portable television sets, for a simple colour graphic display.
Software

Submission + - Why does Firefox on OS X suck?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm a recent switcher to Mac OS X from Windows. Firefox on Windows is excellent, Firefox on Linux is pretty good, but Firefox on OS X is terrible: intermittent crashes, freezes, tabbing between input boxes on web pages skips all drop-down boxes. So how come? The OS X version gets the updates that all the other versions get, but they never fix anything major.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Linux-Sponsored Indy 500 Car

Submitted by
Jordon Kalilich
Jordon Kalilich writes: "Remember Mozilla's successful community-driven campaign to place a Firefox ad in the New York Times? A new community-driven project takes open-source evangelism a step — or, rather, 500 miles — further. The Tux 500 project hopes to raise at least $25,000 (USD) to attain sponsorship of an Indianapolis 500 car. For primary sponsorship, with "Team Linux" in the racing team's name, they'll need at least $350,000. From the site: "If less than 1% of the Linux community donates $1, this will happen... will you do your part?""
Security

Submission + - STEAM 'Hacked', Credit Card Details Stolen

Submitted by
Harv
Harv writes: "According to DailyTech, a hacker known as MaddoxX made a posting on an anti-STEAM website about how he successfully bypassed VALVe's security system and stole a significant amount of data mostly regarding VALVe Cafe owners and users' credit card information."
Education

Submission + - What are the uses of evolutionary theory?

Submitted by
misanthrope101
misanthrope101 writes: "What are the current uses of evolutionary theory? Meaning, what scientific or technological fields use ideas taken from evolutionary theory, such as descent with modification, mutation/selection, and so on? The most obvious would be antiobiotic research, and I've read of genetic algorithms in computer science, but I'd guess there are more applications. I'm not asking for anyone to write me a dissertaion (and this isn't for a school project anyway) but I can't seem to find a good summary of the different fields to which evolutionary theory is relevant."
Space

Submission + - Mysterious Red Cosmic Square with Perfect Symmetry

Submitted by Ano_Nimass Coward
Ano_Nimass Coward writes: Space.com are running a story about a nebula with near perfect bilateral symmetry, surrounding a dying star. The nebula encloses the star like a box. The Red Square ranks among the most symmetrical objects ever observed by scientists. "If you fold things across the principle diagonal axis, you get an almost perfect reflection symmetry," said study leader Peter Tuthill from the University of Sydney in Australia.

Occam's Razor-conforming explanations by astronomers notwithstanding, Dyson Cube anyone? Especially in the light of this study which attributes the red glow to exotic space-hardened organic molecules called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH). PAHs are normally unstable but seem to occur in places like the nebula in question, in exotic nanostructured clusters that are extremely stable and radiation hardened.

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