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Privacy

FBI's Facebook Monitoring Leads To Arrest In England 329

Posted by timothy from the bomb-president-motorcade-rutabaga dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that armed police were called to a UK school earlier today after being advised of a potential threat by the FBI. The school stated that the FBI 'raised the alarm after Internet scanning software picked up a suspicious combination of words,' strongly implying that they are carrying out routine, automated surveillance of social networking sites. While in this case it does appear that there may have been a genuine threat, the story nonetheless raises significant privacy concerns."
Crime

The South Carolina Primary and Voting Machine Fraud 467

Posted by kdawson from the good-ol'-politics dept.
cSeattleGameboy writes "South Carolina sure knows how to pick 'em. Alvin Greene is a broke, unemployed guy who is facing a felony obscenity charge. He made no campaign appearances and raised no money, but he is the brand new Democratic Senate nominee from South Carolina. Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight.com does a detailed analysis of how a guy like this wins a primary race, and many of the signs point to voting machine fraud. There seem to have been irregularities on all sides. 'Dr. Mebane performed second-digit Benford's law tests on the precinct returns from the Senate race. ... If votes are added or subtracted from a candidate's total, possibly due to error or fraud, Mebane's test will detect a deviation from this distribution. Results... showed that Rawl's Election Day vote totals depart from the expected distribution at 90% confidence. In other words, the observed vote pattern for Rawl could be expected to occur only about 10% of the time by chance. ... An unusual, non-random pattern in the precinct-level results suggests tampering, or at least machine malfunction, perhaps at the highest level. And Mebane is perhaps the leading expert on this very subject. Along with the anomalies between absentee ballot v. election day ballots..., something smells here.' Techdirt.com points out that South Carolina uses ES&S voting machines, which have had strings of problems before; and they have no audit trail."

Comment Re:That's Great But... (Score 1) 688

by Genwil (#32568542) Attached to: $1 Trillion In Minerals Found In Afghanistan

This basically means we're staying in Afghanistan indefinitely. Even worse, in the end the only ones who will benefit are the corporations. The taxpayers and the government will never see any of that money.

Who do you think works for the corporations? Answer: The taxpayers.

Also, do you think mining is going to be a nonprofit organization? They'll pay taxes to the government.

This is great news because this could help wipe out Afghanistan's poverty, the actual biggest obstacle to a functioning government.

And as we all know, local people always benefit from mining, extracting, and harvesting operations. Just ask the folks in Nigeria how they are benefitting from oil operations.
Toys

Set Free Your Inner Jedi (Or Pyro) 463

Posted by Soulskill from the sharks-sold-separately dept.
sirgoran writes "We've all thought about being the hero fighting off evil-doers and saving the day ever since we first saw Star Wars. The folks at Wicked Lasers have now brought that a little closer to reality with their latest release: a 1-Watt blue diode laser that can set skin and other things on fire. From an article at Daily Tech, where they talk about the dangers of such a powerful laser: 'And here's the best (or worst) part — it can set people (or things) on fire. Apparently the laser is so high-powered that shining it on fleshy parts will cause them to burst into flames. Of course it's equally capable of blinding people.' The thing that caught my eye was the price: $200. I wonder if they'll be able to meet the demand, since (if it works as advertised) this will be on every geek's Christmas list."

Comment Re:Somebody fill me in here (Score 1) 354

by Genwil (#32533394) Attached to: Australian Gov't Seeks To Record Citizens' Web Histories

...So, politicians focus on the marginal seats. Think Florida, which could go either way.

It just so happens a number of those seats are, currently, in and around Adelaide; a highly religious, conservative city known as "The City of Churches"...

Which means our current administration is pushing through knee-jerk think-of-the-children legislation while the opposition is basically screaming "US TOO BUT BIGGER, BETTER, MORE KNEE-JERKY."

It's pure horseshit and doesn't represent the will of the Australian people at all.

Sorry for the mess you're in. I hope we in Canada don't end up with the same Tweedledumb or Tweedledumber no choice between parties.
Space

Japan Successfully Deploys First Solar Sail In Space 284

Posted by timothy from the beginner's-luck dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This morning the Japanese space agency, JAXA, successfully unfurled a solar sail in space for the first time. Solar sails offer the best hope for deep space exploration because they eliminate the need to carry fuel. The Japanese spacecraft IKAROS created centripetal force by spinning, allowing it to launch the 0.0003-inch-thick sail. While deployment is a challenge in a zero-gravity environment, spacecraft — unlike airplanes — don't have to contend with drag, so with each photon that hits the sail helps the spacecraft gather speed."
Firefox

Microsoft Hides Firefox Extension In Toolbar Update 285

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-they-can dept.
Jan writes "As part of its regular Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released an update for its various toolbars, and this update came with more than just documented fixes. The update also installs an add-on for Internet Explorer and an extension for Mozilla Firefox, both without the user's permission."
Education

Official Kanji Count Increasing Due To Electronics 284

Posted by timothy from the switch-to-english-it's-easy dept.
JoshuaInNippon writes "Those who have studied Japanese know how imposing kanji, or Chinese characters, can be in learning the language. There is an official list of 1,945 characters that one is expected to understand to graduate from a Japanese high school or be considered fluent. For the first time in 29 years, that list is set to change — increasing by nearly 10% to 2,136 characters. 196 are being added, and five deleted. The added characters are ones believed to be found commonly in life use, but are considered to be harder to write by hand and therefore overlooked in previous editions of the official list. Japanese officials seem to have recognized that with the advent and spread of computers in daily life, writing in Japanese has simplified dramatically. Changing the phonetic spelling of a word to its correct kanji only requires a couple of presses of a button, rather than memorizing an elaborate series of brush strokes. At the same time, the barrage of words that people see has increased, thereby increasing the necessity to understand them. Computers have simplified the task of writing in Japanese, but inadvertently now complicated the lives of Japanese language learners. (If you read Japanese and are interested in more details on specific changes, Slashdot.jp has some information!)"
The Courts

Spanish Judges Liken File Sharing To Lending Books 352

Posted by kdawson from the publishers-don't-like-that-either dept.
Dan Fuhry writes "A three-judge panel in the Provincial Court of Madrid has closed a case that has been running since 2005, ruling that the accused are not guilty of any copyright infringement on the grounds that their BitTorrent tracker did not distribute any copyrighted material, and they did not generate any profit from their site: '[t]he judges noted that all this takes places between many users all at once without any of them receiving any financial reward.' This implies that the judges are sympathetic to file sharers. The ruling essentially says that file sharing is the digital equivalent of lending or sharing books or other media. Maybe it's time for all them rowdy pirates to move to Spain."
Mars

Methane-Eating Bacteria May Presage ET Life 91

Posted by kdawson from the to-each-its-own dept.
asukasoryu sends along an intriguing piece in light of our recent discussion of possible signs of life on Saturn's moon Titan. "Researchers have discovered that methane-eating bacteria survive in a unique spring located on Axel Heiberg Island in Canada's extreme north. The subzero water is so salty that it doesn't freeze despite the cold, and it has no consumable oxygen in it. There are, however, big bubbles of methane that come to the surface. Lyle Whyte, McGill University microbiologist, explains that the so-called Lost Hammer spring supports microbial life, that the spring is similar to possible past or present springs on Mars, and that therefore they too could support life."

Comment Re:"Designed for Smartphones" (Score 1) 41

by Genwil (#32495272) Attached to: Gov't App Contests Are Cool, But Are They Useful?

If you create conditions where someone makes an app for smartphones (open government data), and it only gets used by people with smartphones, this is a net gain for the society

Nonsense. The folk with smartphones are typically those who'd already interact with government. You are doing absolutely nothing to interact with those who are totally disenfranchised. You know - the ones who cannot afford the net, cannot afford a fancy phone?

I think you have made too large an assumption and ignored the points about the usefulness of allowing people to interact how, when, and in a manner of their choosing. Good apps are a net benefit.
Operating Systems

Sony Sued Over PS3 "Other OS" Removal 546

Posted by CmdrTaco from the they-deserve-worse dept.
Stoobalou writes "A Californian Playstation 3 user has filed the first class action lawsuit against Sony over removal of the 'Install Other OS' function from the Playstation 3. The action seeks to redress Sony's 'intentional disablement of the valuable functionalities originally advertised as available with the Sony Playstation 3 video game console.' The suit claims that the disablement breaches the sales contract between Sony and its customers and constitutes 'an unfair and deceptive business practice perpetrated on millions of unsuspecting customers.'"
Slashdot.org

Slashdot Discussions Now Include Roulette Video Chat 192

Posted by CmdrTaco from the let's-keep-this-rated-pg dept.
It's been a long time coming, but we're pleased to announce the latest updates to our discussion software. We've been paying a lot of attention to what other websites have been doing in the space, and as we are only too happy to steal good ideas, from now on all Slashdot stories will now be accompanied by a Roulette-style webcam video chat. In testing, we've discovered that Slashdot users are amazingly likely to engage in informative, troll-free discussion when presented with the video image of one of their peers. This new addition to Slashdot nicely rounds out and improves the discussion experience for all users.
Image

College To Save Money By Switching Email Font 306

Posted by samzenpus from the smallest-things dept.
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has come up with an unusual way of saving money: changing their email font. The school expects to use 30% less ink by switching from Arial to Century Gothic. From the article: "Diane Blohowiak is the school's director of computing. She says the new font uses about 30 percent less ink than the previous one. That could add up to real savings, since the cost of printer ink works out to about $10,000 per gallon. Blohowiak says the decision is part of the school's five-year plan to go green. She tells Wisconsin Public Radio it's great that a change that's eco-friendly also saves money."

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