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Crime

MacKinnon Extradition Blocked By UK Home Secretary 258

Posted by timothy from the assange-lite dept.
RockDoctor writes "BBC radio news (2012-10-16 GMT 13:00) is reporting that the Home Secretary has blocked the extradition of Gary MacKinnon to the U.S. for (alleged) computer hacking crimes. Paraphrasing: the Director of Public Prosecutions is going to have to decide if there is sufficient evidence for him to be tried in the UK for crimes committed in (or from) the UK. " (Also at The Independent.)
Government

The Great Meteor Grab 152

Posted by Soulskill from the you-may-not-own-rocks-in-space dept.
RocketAcademy writes "New regulations by the Federal government define asteroidal material to be an antiquity, like arrowheads and pottery, rather than a mineral — and, therefore, not subject to U.S. mining law or eligible for mining claims. At the moment, these regulations only apply to asteroidal materials that have fallen to Earth as meteorites. However, they create a precedent that could adversely affect the plans of companies such as Planetary Resources, who intend to mine asteroids in space."
The Internet

Why Are We So Rude Online? 341

Posted by Soulskill from the because-nobody-can-punch-us-in-the-face dept.
kodiaktau writes "An article in the WSJ discusses why internet users are more rude online than they are in person. The story discusses some of the possible reasons. For example, a study found that browsing Facebook tends to lower people's self control. An MIT professor says people posting on the internet have lowered inhibitions because there is no formal social interaction. Another theory is that communicating through a phone or other device feels like communicating with a 'toy,' which dehumanizes the conversation. Of course, a rude conversation has never happened on Slashdot in the last 15 years."

Comment Re:Simple (Score 5, Informative) 515

by GIL_Dude (#41442831) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Actual Best-in-Show For Free Anti Virus?
Add to the items you list EMET - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29851. This is a free download from Microsoft that allows you to protect processes (such as IE and Java) from well known exploit techniques (such as heap spray, etc.). As an example, it protected against this latest IE zero day "execCommand Use After Free Vulnerability - CVE-2012-4969". We (large enterprise) had no worries at all about that vulnerability since we have EMET deployed and configured. Here's the MS02-063 bulletin - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms12-063. If you expand the execCommand node and look at the mitigations you'll see you would have been protected. Often times Adobe Flash bulletins mention that EMET was a mitigation for the plethora of vulnerabilities that Adobe Flash code contains.
Censorship

Pakistan's PM Demands International Blasphemy Laws From UN 957

Posted by samzenpus from the sticks-and-stones dept.
eldavojohn writes "An article published in Pakistan's Daily Times contains several quotes from Pakistan's Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf indicating his intent to push for international blasphemy laws in both the United Nations and the Organization of Islamic Co-operation (57 countries). These comments came shortly after Pakistan's 'Day of Love for the Prophet' turned into riots that left 19 people dead and, of course, this all follows the extended trailers of 'Innocence of Muslims' being translated. Questionable circumstances surround who is prosecuted under these 'blasphemy laws' and what kind of fear they instill in Pakistan's minorities. The UN's Human Rights Charter mentions protection from 'religious intolerance' but also in the same sentence 'freedom of opinion and expression.'"

Comment Re:In a laptop performance isn't the only issue (Score 3, Informative) 405

by GIL_Dude (#41365057) Attached to: Are SSDs Finally Worth the Money?
I've gone from spinning drives to SSD in my notebooks and I won't be going back. As a person responsible for both coding and creating system images, I rebuild my machines all the time. The build time is a lot faster on an SSD. Besides just the OS, it takes about 15 minutes to install Visual Studio 2010 + SP1 on an SSD as opposed to nearly an hour for a spinning drive. (BTW, I am a real poster - not that Visual Studio troll / shill we've seen recently). I also run a single VM on my notebook. That boots up and runs almost like a real computer instead of the pokey slowness I had before with a spinning drive. Honestly all of the other things mentioned here are valid. Less heat, better shock resistance, better battery life, etc. But don't count performance out either. As with most things, it depends on the workloads you are running. For my workload, SSD makes a lot of sense.
Intel

The Linux-Proof Processor That Nobody Wants 403

Posted by samzenpus from the last-kid-picked dept.
Bruce Perens writes "Clover Trail, Intel's newly announced 'Linux proof' processor, is already a dead end for technical and business reasons. Clover Trail is said to include power-management that will make the Atom run longer under Windows. It had better, since Atom currently provides about 1/4 of the power efficiency of the ARM processors that run iOS and Android devices. The details of Clover Trail's power management won't be disclosed to Linux developers. Power management isn't magic, though — there is no great secret about shutting down hardware that isn't being used. Other CPU manufacturers, and Intel itself, will provide similar power management to Linux on later chips. Why has Atom lagged so far behind ARM? Simply because ARM requires fewer transistors to do the same job. Atom and most of Intel's line are based on the ia32 architecture. ia32 dates back to the 1970s and is the last bastion of CISC, Complex Instruction Set Computing. ARM and all later architectures are based on RISC, Reduced Instruction Set Computing, which provides very simple instructions that run fast. RISC chips allow the language compilers to perform complex tasks by combining instructions, rather than by selecting a single complex instruction that's 'perfect' for the task. As it happens, compilers are more likely to get optimal performance with a number of RISC instructions than with a few big instructions that are over-generalized or don't do exactly what the compiler requires. RISC instructions are much more likely to run in a single processor cycle than complex ones. So, ARM ends up being several times more efficient than Intel."

Comment Re:Statutory damages are devoid of all meaning (Score 2, Interesting) 285

by GIL_Dude (#41303737) Attached to: 8th Circuit Upholds $220,000 Verdict In Jammie Thomas Case
Well, to be fair, they would have to settle the whole "making available" thing before they can determine if the actual damages (by law) were more than $24. Because, honestly, WHO makes the copy? The downloader does. Not the seeder. The seeder "makes available" and the legal status of that has really not been settled. It would be similar to you hanging up a pamphlet on a bulletin board near a copy machine. Yes, people may make copies. But you didn't. You made it available for them. Contrast this with the commercial violation of copyright making bootleg DVDs. The person making the DVD made the copy. Very different. I know it is semantics and all, but copyright law is full of things like this where things don't make a lot of sense.
Networking

More Warnings About High-Frequency Trading 500

Posted by timothy from the financial-chicken dept.
bfwebster writes "From The Big Picture (a great finance/econ blog) comes a link to this New York Times article on some of the risks and problems of high-frequency trading on financial markets and a couple of 'gadflies' who are pushing hard to get some changes and reforms in how Wall Street handles HFT. Key question: when is fast trading too fast?"
Programming

Ask Slashdot: How Would You Fix the Linux Desktop? 1154

Posted by Soulskill from the solid-color-rectangles dept.
itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers are familiar with the Torvalds/de Icaza slugfest over 'the lack of development in Linux desktop initiatives.' The problem with the Linux desktop boils down to this: We need more applications, and that means making it easier for developers to build them, says Brian Proffitt. 'It's easy to point at solutions like the Linux Standard Base, but that dog won't hunt, possibly because it's not in the commercial vendors' interests to create true cross-distro compatibility. United Linux or a similar consortium probably won't work, for the same reasons,' says Proffitt. So, we put it to the Slashdot community: How would you fix the Linux desktop?"
Crime

FBI Denies It Held iPhone UDIDs Stolen By AntiSec 216

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the it-was-actually-the-nsa dept.
judgecorp writes "The FBI has denied the UDID codes released yesterday came from an agent's laptop, as claimed by the AntiSec hacker group. The FBI says it does not hold such data, and the attack never happened. However, the agent named by AntiSec is real, and some of the published UDID codes have been found to be genuine. So where did they come from?"
Biotech

Researchers Engineer Light-Activated Skeletal Muscle 20

Posted by samzenpus from the flick-of-a-switch dept.
submeta writes "Researchers at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania have genetically engineered skeletal muscle cells to respond to light. The hope is that this 'bio-integrated' approach may lead to 'highly articulated, flexible robots.' The technique, known as optogenetics, has previously been used to stimulate neurons in worms to fire."
Transportation

Taking Telecommuting To the Next Level - the RV 365

Posted by samzenpus from the dear-indugu dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I have been telecommuting as a software architect for a major corporation since 2007. It has allowed me to live a quality rural lifestyle. Never content, am now considering living on the road for several years. Due to the proliferation of 4G and wireless hotspots, I see no reason I could not do this from a 5th-wheel trailer. Have any slashdotters truly cut the cord in this manner? Any advice or warnings?"
The Internet

Windows 8 Changes Host File Blocking 1030

Posted by samzenpus from the try-it-like-this dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Windows 8 has been confirmed to not only ignore, but also modify the hosts file. As soon as a website that should be blocked is accessed, the corresponding entry in the hosts file is removed, even if the hosts file is read-only. The hosts file is a popular, cross-platform way of blocking access to certain domains, such as ad-serving websites."

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UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn

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