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Comment Re:Out of Date (Score 2, Informative) 118

by ihatewinXP (#27079187) Attached to: The Best Way Through the Great Firewall of China

I just left Beijing in November (each province and city has different protocols and sites that are to be blocked - its not just one Great Firewall) and can pass on what I have seen.

Most people (foreign and Chinese) just use an ever evolving list of proxy sites for "that one site" that is being blocked for whatever reason. I remember having to finally give up on http://postsecret.com/ as Chinese censors had seen the name and apparently added it to the list sight unseen. http://flyproxy.com/ was the most used and usually quite fast and able to handle most flash/cgi.

TOR and all that are great but who is running the nodes? If you dont think China is combing through traffic of people TRYING to hide you have another thing coming (I dont feel like combing through but there was a /. article some time ago discussing that Fort Mead MD seems to have a hugely disproportionate amount of TOR nodes so it seems the NSA is on the same page). China is all about stability and.... actually no, thats it, stability. As long as you are using proxyserver of the month for negligible things there will never be a problem. If you are using TOR/Anonymizer/etc to attempt to break down the walls and change the government - aiya - watch out.

Comment Re:An echo chamber... (Score 3, Insightful) 409

by ihatewinXP (#26899375) Attached to: Facebook Scrambles To Contain ToS Fallout

What?

In your scenario someone posts excerpts of a book they are writing online, say as a series of notes on Facebook, then after this book is published Facebook Lawyers® are going to 1. hunt down a user and then 2. sue them in open court for a share of the profits?

Im sorry but im still not buying these hypothetical situations. Can we pin down anyone actually ever getting screwed by this (be it FB, Myspace, Youtube, Flikr, Whatevr)? I mean this is capitalism - saying "once there is money in ripping people off it will happen" doesnt cut it - lets see it actually happen.

Comment An echo chamber... (Score 4, Insightful) 409

by ihatewinXP (#26898185) Attached to: Facebook Scrambles To Contain ToS Fallout

Dont we have this discussion about once a year?

I remember the exact same thing going down with Flikr, Myspace, Youtube... Of course I dont agree with the wording and implications of the new TOS but can anyone point me to an example where any of these sites have commandeered content and used it nefariously? Microsoft maybe once?
Wine

Apps That Officially Support Wine 354

Posted by kdawson from the insert-alcohol-related-line-here dept.
David Gerard writes "Wine (the Windows not-an-emulator for Unix) runs Windows applications more often than not. (Certainly more often than Vista does.) Dan Kegel on the wine-users mailing list/forum has started gathering apps that declare Wine a supported platform. And there's now a Wine Support Honor Roll page on the Wine wiki. We need more apps that work with Wine stating that they consider it a supported platform. If you write Win32 open source or shareware, please open yourself to the wider market!"
Communications

Scientists "Teleport" Quantum Information One Meter 107

Posted by timothy from the teleport-a-child-and-we'll-be-impressed dept.
the4thdimension writes "While we may not be beaming up to the Enterprise anytime soon, a team of scientists from the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan have managed to teleport information between two atoms up to a meter apart. Until this point, only very tiny distances were able to be traveled. However, using a complicated system of photons, ions, lasers, and electromagnetics, scientists have managed to 'teleport' information contained on one atom to another atom that is in a separate sealed container. This can lead to a wide range of developments in computing and communications." Update: 01/29 22:29 GMT by T : Sorry, it's a dupe, but today's article in Time is better reading than the abstract anyhow.
Government

In MN, Massive Police Raids On Suspected Protestors 961

Posted by kdawson from the it-can-happen-here dept.
X0563511 alerts us to events in Minneapolis and St. Paul in advance of the Republican convention (which has been put on hold because of Hurricane Gustav). Local police backed by the FBI raided a number of homes and public buildings and confiscated computers and other material. From Salon.com: "Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than 'fire code violations,' and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying. Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning — one which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being raided." Here is local reporting from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: "Aided by informants planted in protest groups, authorities raided at least six buildings across St. Paul and Minneapolis to stop an 'anarchist' plan to disrupt this week's Republican National Convention. From Friday night through Saturday afternoon, officers surrounded houses, broke down doors, handcuffed scores of people and confiscated suspected tools of civil disobedience ... A St. Paul City Council member described it as excessive, while activists, many of whom were detained and then released without charges, called it intimidation designed to quash free speech."
Graphics

Carmack to Bring "Graphical Tour de Force" to the iPhone 105

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the mmo-on-the-iphone-for-complete-loss-of-productivity dept.
Apparently developer John Carmack loves his iPhone and is still kicking himself for not having something ready to go at launch time. However, he has announced plans to bring a "graphical tour de force" to Apple's popular device. "But as for which one, the company isn't saying just yet, though given that the recently launched id Mobile division already has Doom RPG and the forthcoming Wolfenstein RPG to its credit, we wouldn't be at all surprised if Carmack will bring Quake or some flavor of Rage to the small screen as well. What's more, he's apparently considering the idea of tackling the MMO market on the iPhone down the line, though he admits that he's being 'conservative' and doesn't 'want to be in a bet-the-company situation' just yet."
United States

Diebold Voter Fraud Rumors in New Hampshire Primaries 861

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oh-good-this-again dept.
Westech writes "Multiple indications of vote fraud are beginning to pop up regarding the New Hampshire primary elections. Roughly 80% of New Hampshire precincts use Diebold machines, while the remaining 20% are hand counted. A Black Box Voting contributor has compiled a chart of results from hand counted precincts vs. results from machine counted precincts. In machine counted precincts, Clinton beat Obama by almost 5%. In hand counted precincts, Obama beat Clinton by over 4%, which closely matches the scientific polls that were conducted leading up to the election. Another issue is the Republican results from Sutton precinct. The final results showed Ron Paul with 0 votes in Sutton. The next day a Ron Paul supporter came forward claiming that both she and several of her family members had voted for Ron Paul in Sutton. Black Box Voting reports that after being asked about the discrepancy Sutton officials decided that Ron Paul actually received 31 votes in Sutton, but they were left off of the tally sheet due to 'human error.'"
Censorship

Submission + - Graph shows fraud in Russain elections (livejournal.com)

Submitted by
gaika
gaika writes: "The graph in the best traditions of Edward Tufte shows how the voting was rigged in Russian parlament elections. Initially some regions were showing higher than 100% attendance, but later on everything was corrected, or way too much corrected, as the correlation between winning party's vote and attendance now stands at 90%. I guess the people who have rigged the vote have never heard about Correlation Cofficient."
United States

Submission + - Internet Thought Police Bill Before Congress (news.com) 2

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "A new bill is before congress that is expected to approved and will establish a new federal commission tasked with investigating Americans with "extremist belief systems" and those who may engage in "ideologically based violence." The article also mentions a chilling quote from the bill that has already made it past the House of Representatives (by 404-6):

The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.
"Extremist belief systems?" <sarcasm>None of that on Slashdot!</sarcasm>"
Space

Submission + - First Evidence of Another Universe? 2

Submitted by blamanj
blamanj writes: Three months ago, astronomers announced the discovery of a large hole at the edge of our universe. Now, Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton thinks she knows what that means. (Subscription req'd at New Scientist site, there's also an overview here.) According to string theory, there are many universes besides our own. Her team says that smaller universes are positioned at the edge of our universe, and because of gravitational interactions, they can be observed, and they're willing to make a prediction. The recently discovered void is in the northern hemisphere. They contend another one will be found in the southern hemisphere.
Security

Submission + - More Malicious TOR Nodes (f-secure.com)

Submitted by
You Read Browser Certificate Warnings... Right?
You Read Browser Certificate Warnings... Right? writes: "Apparently the TOR exit node that recently sniffed embassy passwords wasn't the only bad node. F-Secure tested some 400 TOR nodes and found that at least one German node was performing man-in-the-middle attacks against SSL. While that node is now offline thanks to the German authorities, it does raise the question of how you know whether any given node is trustworthy. They note that there are still other "suspicious" nodes out there, like the one that only forwards for people logging into Google and MySpace."
The Media

Submission + - BW's Facts-be-Damned Defense of Software Patents 1

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Citing their 'neurotic reaction to patent law,' BusinessWeek rips Slashdot readers a new one in 'Give Software Patents a Break', which takes people to task for denying credit to innovations that in hindsight seem to be no-brainers. 'For example,' argues BW, 'Amazon's 1-Click checkout patent for speeding online purchases has been challenged in both the courts and by detractors as being incredibly obvious. No evidence of a similar innovation predating the Amazon patent was found despite a large bounty offered for its discovery and the ensuing widespread search.' That's the same argument Amazon unsuccessfully lobbied Congress with. Except prior art was found, even if the Jeff Bezos-funded BountyQuest couldn't bring itself to declare an 'official' bounty winner. And some of that prior art — a TV remote patent — was cited by a USPTO Examiner as he rejected most of the 1-Click patent claims last month. Don't hold your breath for a Pulitzer on this one, BW."

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