Michigan has some other bad laws in place. Apparently, it is considered a crime to use someone else's public wifi network without their express authorization. There was a case where a guy used a coffee shop's free wifi, but from his car and not from inside the store. He was charged with a felony and he ended up pleading to a $400 fine and 40 hours of community service. I'm not sure how much discretion the prosecutors have in a case like this, but I definitely fault the legislature for making something like this a felony that could be punished by 5 years in jail.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,276720,00.html

So if this guy is really considered a "hacker", then I guess that means we need to start prosecuting parents who read their kids' emails or log into their Facebook accounts. After all, they would be accessing private material without their kids' consent.

I guess this story tells us some important info about computer law. Either prosecutors can be so technologically incompetent that they can wrongfully think this is something worth prosecuting, or Michigan's felony computer misuse laws are written so broadly that just about anyone could be convicted of something.

Wikipedia has nothing to do with the decision. According to TFA,

Kaplan reminded her that he had warned the jurors every day during the 3 week trial not to do any research on their own.

This is just a case of a juror collecting info outside of the courtroom. If they had wanted info on rape trauma syndrome, they were supposed to request it from the judge instead of getting it on their own. You could argue whether or not the research tainted the decision, but the fact that they got info from Wikipedia is irrelevant.

Large, heavy and a lot of self-discharge? Are we talking about batteries still or Slashdot users?

Pretty sure you just get a random rate so they can test out conversions. I don't believe this has anything to do with browser type. And you probably keep getting the same rate on the same browser based on cookies.

The issue is poor security in electronic voting machines produced by the major US manufacturers. I don't think many Slashdotters are inherently opposed to voting machines. The problem is many of the voting machines used in US elections are poorly designed and don't take even basic security precautions.

Let's take Diebold for example. They ended up having to rename their voting machine subsidiary to Premier Election Solutions because it was tarnishing the name of their company and was making their ATM business look bad. A computer science researcher did a source code analysis of their product in 2004 and remarked "this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts." Another analysis concluded “the system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise."

It's a relatively simple process in some of these machines to reprogram them and change the outcome of an election. With that in mind, we need standards in place to ensure that people are not committing election fraud with e-voting machines. Until I can see independent studies on voting machine platforms that validate adequate security protocols, I'm going to remain skeptical about them.

For more information on security risks in e-voting machines, check out the Premier Election Solutions Wikipedia entry. It's pretty eye opening.

NPR's Planet Money covered this before too. Gone in 60 Seconds grossed $240 million at the box office, but somehow "lost" $212 million. Their accounting is about as realistic as their movies.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/05/the_friday_podcast_angelina_sh.html

So let's assume that he violated policy in refusing to give the password to his boss's boss or create accounts for people. How does this amount to a criminal offense?

If he violates policy, then fire him. But it's the fault of his boss to let him be the only person with access to the system for this long. They should have had other qualified people working with him to help maintain what is described as such an important system. I'm confused about when this goes from being a personnel matter to a criminal matter. Is this just because he was a government employee, or does this extend to the private section? The implications of this become very scary.

There was a lot of press initially about the anthrax being high end weapons grade with silica. The truth is, the initial reports of silica are very dubious. That highlights one of the issues in a case like this - you don't even know what basic facts to believe. Almost all of the evidence against Ivins is circumstantial and claims by the government haven't always held up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#Silicon_content_too_high

There's also a separate NASA mission site with some easier to understand info.

http://www.nasa.gov/lcross

Sanctions also are only effective if everyone abides by them. With Iran though, if the western world stops selling them the widgets they need, China or Russia will fill the void. Then they become stronger allies and we have even less leverage than before.

You're wrong.

High frequency trading is based on exploiting knowledge that isn't available to everyone. Its akin to insider trading and should be regulated.

Lets say that a company announces something that means big profits. Lots of people then place orders to buy. Due to a special agreement with NASDAQ or whoever, a high frequency trading program will see these orders getting ready to be placed and make their orders a fraction of a second before everybody else. So they get the stock for slightly cheaper and then sell it off quickly for a profit. They end up making money off the people that don't have access to high frequency trading. They don't make a lot off of each trade, but they make up for it in volume.

If this is allowed to continue, the markets will lose their credibility. Hopefully they will either self regulate or government intervention will take care of the problem.