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Comment Re:1984 came late... (Score 5, Informative) 751

by holygoat (#30691610) Attached to: Full Body Scanners Violate Child Porn Laws

Um...

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/britain-to-put-cctv-cameras-inside-private-homes/

"£400 million ($668 million) will be spend on installing and monitoring CCTV cameras in the homes of private citizens. Why? To make sure the kids are doing their homework, going to bed early and eating their vegetables. The scheme has, astonishingly, already been running in 2,000 family homes. The government’s “children’s secretary” Ed Balls is behind the plan, which is aimed at problem, antisocial families. The idea is that, if a child has a more stable home life, he or she will be less likely to stray into crime and drugs."
Transportation

Computer Failure Causes Gridlock In MD County 483

Posted by Soulskill from the single-point-of-roadrage dept.
Uncle Rummy writes "A central traffic control computer in Montgomery County, Maryland failed early Wednesday morning, leading to widespread gridlock across the entire county. The computer, which dates to the 1970s, is the single point of unified control for all traffic signals in the county, which comprises a number of major Washington DC-area suburban communities. When the system failed, it caused all signals to default to stand-alone operation, rather than the highly-tuned synchronization that usually serves to facilitate traffic flow during rush hours. The resulting chaos is a yet another stark reminder of how much modern civilization relies on behind-the-scenes automation to deliver and control basic services and infrastructure. The system remains down Thursday, with no ETA in sight."

Comment Re:OOh (Score 3, Interesting) 803

by brain159 (#28713639) Attached to: Windows 7 Clean Install Only In Europe

It won't work the same way. For win7 Upgrade versions (from what I've gathered) you'll have to install and activate your Old OS and then put 7 on over the top.

MS are basically doing us in Europe a huge favour - the preorder pricing for Win7 Home Premium E is VERY heavily discounted. Like, it's about £50.

We couldn't Upgrade if we wanted to (meh), don't have IE installed as default (yay!), and get the Full Version for the price they would've been charging for the inferior Upgrade Edition.
The Almighty Buck

A Look At the Tech Behind Burnout Paradise 44

Posted by Soulskill from the eight-cylinders-of-awesome dept.
Eurogamer sat down with Richard Parr and Alex Fry of Criterion Games about the evolution of the technology behind Burnout Paradise , and how they engineered a complex, open world across multiple platforms. "Criterion's method of exacting the most performance from the new architecture isn't so much about threading as such, it's all about parallelization. Rather than lump different game aspects onto different threads (where massive latencies can build as each processor waits for the other to finish its work), game code is highly optimized to make use of what processors are available at any given moment on whatever target hardware, and by choosing the all-important balance points, the experience is like-for-like on all platforms. High-level management code that is unique to each platform then processes the game code according to the hardware that is available." The first part of their Q&A session has also been posted.

Comment Re:Voltage and current (Score 1) 363

by brain159 (#26896533) Attached to: Handset Vendors Plug Micro-USB Charge Ports

The Three 3g/hsdpa dongle (which is really a Huawei modem) does the same trick - plug it in, Windows sees a USB CDROM drive and (unless you've disabled it) will autorun the driver installer.

The same technique is used more generally by "U3" flashdisks (from Sandisk, primarily). There's a way to remove that behaviour from the device - and quite probably a way to make it launch your arbitary attack-code instead of the U3 Launcher.
Media

Monty Python Banks On the Long Tail Via YouTube 222

Posted by timothy from the finally-a-perfect-use-for-the-foot-icon dept.
JTRipper writes "Monty Python seems to have done the right thing. Instead of issuing take down notices of their videos on YouTube, they are doing it better themselves with their own YouTube channel. They are putting all their clips (including snips from their movies) up in a decent resolution, with the only caveat being a link to buying the movies and TV episodes from Amazon."
IT

Exchanging Pictures To Generate Passwords 123

Posted by timothy from the worth-a-thousand-words dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Today, Ileana Buhan, a Romanian computer scientist, is presenting her PhD Thesis at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. She is using biometrics to protect confidential information when it is exchanged between two mobile devices. This is a very innovative approach to security. Buhan's biometric application will generate almost unbreakable passwords from photos taken by the connected users. Here is how it works. 'To do this, two users need to save their own photos on their PDAs. They then take photos of each other. The PDA compares the two photos and generates a security code for making a safe connection.'"

Comment Re:Oh great... (Score 1) 135

by brain159 (#25406079) Attached to: Full Review of the T-Mobile G1 Android Device

It's relatively hard for an Android application to actually automatically initiate a call. It requires a Permission flag which is going to be quite hard to get at install-time (I believe it'll throw a huge red WARNING sort of alert up).

However, it's pretty easy for an app to nearly initiate a call - passing the number to the Dialler and requiring that the user approve by hitting Send/Call/Green themselves.

If you don't empower the Average User to make that sort of decision, then you also ensure that developers are not free to innovate.
Media

MediaDefender's BitTorrent-Based DOS Takes Down Revision3 426

Posted by timothy from the well-that's-certainly-reasonable dept.
Sandman1971 writes "Over the long Memorial Day weekend, Revision3 was the target of a malicious Denial Of Service Attack which brought R3 to its knees. After investigating the matter, it was discovered that the source of the attacks came from MediaDefender, the famed company hired by the MPAA and RIAA to try and stop the spread of illegal file sharing. The kicker? Revision3 was taken down for running a bittorent tracker to distribute its own legal content."
Censorship

Submission + - Scientology Legal Machine starts on Wikileaks! (wikileaks.org) 3

Submitted by
Freedom
Freedom writes: "http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology_collected_Operating_Thetan_documents

Wikileaks is reporting that The Religious Technology Center ("RTC"), "the owner of the confidential Advanced Technology of the Scientology religion and the holder of exclusive rights under the copyrights applicable to the Advanced Technology materials." has sent it's first legal threat to Wikileaks, demanding that they remove the material on the grounds of Copyright held in the United States.

This is the response all critics were expecting of the Church of Scientology, who's constant attack and litigation strategy still does not change in the era of the Streisand Effect.

The RTC requests that Wikileaks

preserve any and all documents pertaining to this
matter and this customer, including, but not limited to, logs, data
entry sheets, applications — electronic or otherwise, registrations
forms, billings statements or invoices, computer print-outs, disks,
hard drives, etc.


Join the campaign against the oppressive totalitarian pyramid business posing as religion on enturbulation dot org."

Why Aren't More Linux Users Gamers? 693

Posted by Zonk from the all-about-the-games dept.
tops writes "MadPenguin.org wonders why more Linux users aren't gamers and attempts to answer that question. The article suggests, 'As far as I'm concerned, it all comes down to a choice. Expect the gaming industry to follow the Linux doctrine or instead, build up a viable, cross platform gaming market that includes us, the Linux users.' The article urges publishers to consider Linux users as a viable market, and requests that game developers target Linux as a platform during the pre-production phase." What do you think are the most important obstacles barring the big game publishers from reaching out to the Linux market more than they already do?
Censorship

Submission + - Wikileaks - CCHR Exposed As Scientology front (wikileaks.org) 2

Submitted by
Anonymous
Anonymous writes: "Wikileaks is now hosting a compressed archive of leaked emails that prove once and for all the "Citizens Commission on Human Rights" (CCHR), which mostly campaigns against Psychiatry, is a front of the Church of Scientology.

These files, submitted to Wikileaks by members of the 'Anonymous' group dedicated to peacefully protesting the Church of Scientology (CoS) organization, are internal e-mails sent to them from someone who formerly was, or maybe currently still is, on the inside of one of the organizations.

They reveal outlines of plans on how CCHR/CoS intend to distribute propaganda on the Internet, and compelling evidence that practice of 'Fair Game' in many forms is still alive and well, and aimed at not just critics but media establishments and members of the press. Though the term 'Fair Game' itself is no longer used by the organization, the intent is clear.

There is also potential evidence of the Scientologists often denied policy of "Disconnection" from families that was recently once again brought to light by the launching of exscientologykids by the ex scientologists Kendra Wiseman, Astra Woodcraft, and most damning of all Jenna Miscavige, the niece of the Chairman of the Board of the Church of Scientology.

The emails concerning their propaganda campaign may prove that the CCHR is guilty of breaking US laws against illegal lobbying, "The intent of these laws is to keep rich lobbying interests from looking bigger than they are. So that a small group of people (who may be pushing a particular piece of legislation) can make it look like there is a groundswell of public support (or opposition) when there is in fact no such thing."

Finally, if even $1 is proved to have transferred between the CCHR and the CoS, it is highly illegal, and should bring about the downfall of the Church of Scientology's US Tax exemption from the IRS and these emails certainly give cause for an investigation into their accounts."
Censorship

Wikileaks Gets Domain Back, Injunction Dissolved 70

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the it-all-sounds-like-dirty-pool-to-me dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The judge in the Wikileaks case has dissolved the injunction against Wikileaks, which means that it can get its .org domain back. He defended his prior ruling because it was based on the pittance of information the bank and registrar had provided him, saying 'This is a case in which we had a (dispute) with named parties, and the parties were duly served. One of which properly responded and came to this court with a proposed settlement in this lawsuit... Nobody filed any timely responses to the court's order.'"
Censorship

Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database 684

Posted by kdawson from the finger-on-the-scale dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Church of Scientology can delete auctions from eBay with no supervision under the VeRO program, and has used this to delete all resale of the e-meters Scientologists use. This is to stop members from buying used units from ex-members instead of buying from the official (and very expensive) source. Given Scientology's record of fraud and abuse, should eBay give them this level of trust? Will this set a precedent for other companies that want to stop the aftermarket resale of their products?"

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