Utopia - Slashdot User

Submission + - Foreign Nationals plead guilty to Espionage

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20, 2006 @01:09PM

An anonymous reader writes: The first convictions of the Economic Espionage Act, created 10 years ago, occured last week when two men from China plead guilty.

From the article:
"Fei Ye, 40, a U.S. citizen from China, and Ming Zhong, 39, a permanent U.S. resident from China, pleaded guilty last week to the rare charge of economic espionage to benefit a foreign nation."

Read more here and here. It is interesting to note both men and Meng, another man indicted last week, all worked for Silicon Valley technology companies.

Submission + - Lagotek Previews SideShow Gadgets for Automation

Submitted by

Julie

on Wednesday December 20, 2006 @12:22PM

Julie writes: "Lagotek looks to be the first home automation company to demonstrate gadgets for SideShow devices. From a low-cost SideShow device like a handheld remote control, users will be able to select a "gadget" associated with various scenes like GOOD NIGHT and ROMANCE. The GOOD MORNING scene, for example, might ramp up the lights, jack up the thermostat and play Neil Diamond in the bedroom. SideShow is a feature of Vista that enables users to view tiny bits of useful data — like Outlook appointments — on an auxiliary display, without having to boot up. It's most often demonstrated as an add-on to a laptop, but at WinHEC this year, multiple other applications were demo'd. The home-automation community is catching on."

Submission + - Humans sense of smell "Underestimated" - B

Submitted by Benjamin Long on Tuesday December 19, 2006 @11:15AM

Benjamin Long writes: The study, by a team of neuroscientists and engineers, led by Noam Sobel of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, blindfolded college students who crawled through grass to sniff out a chocolate-scented trail. They found evidence of a human smelling ability that experts thought was impossible.

Submission + - A Fast Way to find the Best Web Design Tools

Submitted by

taylorhayward

on Tuesday December 19, 2006 @10:51AM

taylorhayward writes: "If you're looking for web icons, fonts, images, etc. thePeoplesToolbox is a very fast way to find the best sites. The links on this site are sorted by how many people use them, so you can avoid the crappy sites, and quickly find the good ones. The site also remembers the sites you like, so you can find them again months later. There are 500 sites with descriptions that have been broken out by category. You can also add your own links."

Submission + - Gates - Not a fan of DRM

Submitted by TheNetAvenger on Monday December 18, 2006 @10:48PM

TheNetAvenger writes: Even though MS has provided DRM mechanisms for Windows Media, as many have stated before, it is out of necessity for the content providers and not something MS or even Gates himself sees as a good thing according comments he made in a recent blog roundtable. http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/8136/53

Even Microsoft founder Bill Gates finds it easier to "just buy a CD and rip it" than grapple with the copyright protection used by online music stores.
...
Gates went on to say Digital Rights Management "causes too much pain for legitimate buyers" trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He declined to elaborate on how Microsoft would address this.

Submission + - FBI bugging with remotely reprogrammed cellphones

Submitted by

booyabazooka

on Sunday December 17, 2006 @08:01PM

booyabazooka writes: "The FBI has shown that it can remotely modify firmware on some mobile phones to use them as bugs even when the devices appear to be turned off. From the article: "Authorities won't reveal how they did this. But a countersurveillance expert said Nextel, Motorola Razr and Samsung 900 series cellphones can be reprogrammed over the air, using methods meant for delivering upgrades and maintenance." Combined with loose wiretapping legislation, it seems like we can be listened to... pretty much any place, any time."

Submission + - The absurdity of checking boarding passes

Submitted by Frisky070802 on Sunday December 17, 2006 @07:57PM

Frisky070802 writes: Slashdot has reported several times about the FBI and TSA investigating the grad student who posted a web site that could print authentic-looking boarding passes. The latest in the saga is an article in the NY Times about the absurdity of actually checking IDs and boarding passes at the TSA checkpoints. It quotes Bruce Schneier and Matt Blaze about how easy it is to bypass the weak security in these passes, and how targeting the person who exposed the weakness is just plain wrong.

Submission + - storage media

Submitted by

danamln

on Sunday December 17, 2006 @07:50PM

danamln writes: "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPri ntable.jhtml;jsessionid=A1ASNKQZBSFTFQFIQMGSFGGAVC BQWIV0?xml=/connected/2006/12/13/nlife13.xml&site= 17&page=0 is reporting A device the size of a sugar cube will be able to record and store high resolution video footage of every second of a human life within two decades, experts said yesterday. Researchers said governments and societies must urgently debate the implications of the huge increases in computing power and the growing mass of information being collected on individuals. Some fear that the advent of "human black boxes" combined with the extension of medical, financial and other digital records will lead to loss of privacy and a dramatic expansion of the nanny state. Others highlight positive advances in medicine, education, crime prevention and the way history will be recorded. Leading computer scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists gathered to debate these issues at Memories for Life, a conference held at the British Library yesterday. Prof Nigel Shadbolt, president of the British Computer Society and professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Southampton, said: "In 20 years' time it will be possible to record high quality digital video of an entire lifetime of human memories. It's not a question of whether it will happen; it's already happening." Cliff Lynch, director of the US think tank Coalition for Networked Information, said the changes could lead to a dramatic extension of state interference. "Imagine having a personal companion that whines at you three times a day, telling you that you are eating the wrong things and that you spent more than you earned today. The scary thing is it might be foisted on us.""

Journal Journal: AMD flies in Hawk, Griffin notebook CPUs

Journal by OSTG Marketing on Sunday December 17, 2006 @02:23PM

AMD plans to fly. They've labeled their new platform, 'Kite' , a collection of technologies the chip maker recommends manufacturers incorporate alongside its Turion and Mobile Sempron processors. Kite will center on Hawk - a mobile CPU update that will support 800MHz DDR 2. "The next big change to AMD's laptop-friendly chipsets will come in Q4 with the debut of products that support DirectX 10, PCI Express 2 and

Submission + - The Perfect Setup - OpenSuSE 10.2

Submitted by

hausmasta

on Sunday December 17, 2006 @01:12PM

hausmasta writes: "This is a detailed description about how to set up an OpenSuSE 10.2 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS), BIND DNS server, ProFTPd server, MySQL server, Courier POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.).

http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_opensuse_1 0.2"

Submission + - BBC uses Skype links in multiple murder hunt..

Submitted by

Nico M

on Sunday December 17, 2006 @10:01AM

Nico M writes: "The highly-publiced UK murder hunt for the serial killer(s) of five young sex workers in Suffolk is using Skype to ask for information. BBC News is embedding freephone Skype links to both the police incident room & Crimestoppers UK — http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6171469.stm Is it the first time Skype has been used like this?"

Are You Switching to 64-bit Processors? 252

Posted by Cliff on Saturday December 16, 2006 @07:23PM from the is-64-bit-windows-worth-the-switch dept.

chip_whisperer asks: "I used to be a big time custom desktop builder, making many working boxes per year, but I've been off the bandwagon for about four years now and am trying to get back into it now that Ars Technica has just released their recommendations. The standard seems to be heading towards 64-bit processors, but I'm wondering if it worth it to run a box on XP-64? I've heard that driver support for 64-bit processors can be a hassle. Also, for you fellow Linux geeks, how are current distros (like Suse, Ubuntu, Debian, and others) doing in supporting 64 bit processors?"

Near-Complete Cure For Diabetes In Two Years? 271

Posted by kdawson on Saturday December 16, 2006 @07:21PM from the medical-miracle dept.

resistant writes "Researchers at a Toronto hospital have stumbled upon a dramatic treatment for mouse diabetes, with large implications for the treatment of diabetes in humans. From the article: 'The islet inflammation cleared up and the diabetes was gone. Some have remained in that state for as long as four months, with just one injection... They also discovered that their treatments curbed the insulin resistance that is the hallmark of Type 2 diabetes, and that insulin resistance is a major factor in Type 1 diabetes, suggesting the two illnesses are quite similar.'"
Update: 12/17 03:46 GMT by KD : resistant adds that the Cell Journal article is posted as a PDF as well as in plain text.

Submission + - Why cell phone outage reports are secret

Submitted by

thenendo

on Saturday December 16, 2006 @07:07PM

thenendo writes: "An MSNBC article reports on the recent rejection of FOIA requests for government-collected cell phone outage statistics. It would seem that the FCC is using the threat of terrorism as a thinly veiled excuse to protect Telecoms from fair market competition for reliability. From the article:
"A federal Freedom of Information Act request for the data, filed in August by MSNBC.com, has been rejected by the agency [the FCC]. The stated reasons: Release of the information could help terrorists plan attacks against the United States, and it would harm the companies involved.
...
"'There is nothing mysterious behind it, it is corporate competition protection,' said Cressey, now a partner in Good Harbor Consulting. 'The only reason for the government to not let these records get out is then one telco provider could run a full-page ad saying "the government says we're more reliable."'
...
"Al Tompkins, a Freedom of Information Act expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think-tank, said release of the cell phone outage reports would be 'a tremendous consumer tool,' and compared them to the Federal Aviation Administration's publication of airline on-time records.""

Submission + - I, Nanobot: Bionanotechnology is coming!

Submitted by Maria Williams on Saturday December 16, 2006 @06:34PM

Maria Williams writes: Alan H. Goldstein, inventor of the A-PRIZE, and popular science columnist, says: Scientists are on the verge of breaking the carbon barrier — creating artificial life and changing forever what it means to be human. And we're not ready...

Nanofabricated animats may be infinitesimally tiny, but their electrons will be exactly the same size as ours — and their effect on human reality will be as immeasurable as the universe. Like an inverted SETI program, humanity must now look inward, constantly scanning technology space for animats, or their progenitors. The first alien life may not come from the stars, but from ourselves.

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