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Google

Submission + - Google sues internet scammers. (cnn.com)

Submitted by Cwix
Cwix writes: "Google filed a lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and other unnamed defendants for allegedly using the company's name and colorful logo to promote fraudulent work-at-home money-making schemes."

Submission + - How can a 16 year old get a job in IT?

Submitted by psmaster
psmaster writes: I am an A+ certified 16 year old, going on 17. I am currently studying for Security+ and then Network+. I attend a technical school for half the day to learn all that I can. My question is a simple one: How can I get a decent part-time job working in the field? I have plenty of hands-on experience with fixing and troubleshooting computers and networks. I know, some might say to just do odd jobs for friends, but I am looking for a more steady income and most of my friends want the "friend discount". Any help would be much appreciated.

Submission + - Virgin Media to trial filesharing monitoring (theregister.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Shokaster
Shokaster writes: The Register reports that Virgin Media are to begin monitoring file sharing using a deep packet inspection system, CView, provided by Deltica, a BAE subsidiary. The trial will cover about 40% of customers, although those involved will not be informed. CView's deep packet inspection is the same technology that powered Phorm's advertising system.
Initially Virgin Media's implementation will focus on music sharing and will inspect packets to determine whether the content is licensed or unlicensed, based on data provided by the record industry. Virgin Media emphasised that records will not be kept on individual customers and that data on the level of copyright infringement will be aggregated and anonymised.

Submission + - SPAM: LSE trading hit by technical glitch

Submitted by viralMeme
viralMeme writes: Trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has been brought to a halt by technical difficulties.

The LSE said it had been affected by connectivity issues and at 1033 GMT had placed all orders for shares into an "auction call period".

This allows traders to put orders to buy or sell shares into the system but without executing them.
Link to Original Source
The Internet

Submission + - 30000 UK ISP Users Face Illegal P2P Threat Letters (ispreview.co.uk)

Submitted by Mark.JUK
Mark.JUK writes: Solicitors at ACS:Law have been granted approval by the Royal Courts of Justice in London to demand the private personal details of some 30,000 customers suspected of involvement with illegal file sharing from UK broadband ISPs. The customers concerned are "suspected" of illegally file sharing (P2P) approximately 291 movie titles, they now face threatening demands for money (settlement) or risk the prospect of court action. It's noted that 25,000 of the IP addresses that have been collected belong to BT users.
Networking

Submission + - Virgin Media Begins DNS Hijacking 1

Submitted by Mopatop
Mopatop writes: The UK's largest cable ISP Virgin Media is following Comcast and Verizon in the recent trend of hijacking non-existent DNS requests. Instead of a traditional "not found" message, users are greeted with an advertisement-filled error page when attempting to visit a non-existent domain. Virgin have been playing by the book a lot recently, it's a shame that they've decided to hop on this worrying bandwagon.
Medicine

Submission + - You Too Can Learn Echolocation

Submitted by
The Narrative Fallacy
The Narrative Fallacy writes: "Wired reports that with just a few weeks of training, you can learn to "see" objects in the dark using echolocation the same way dolphins and bats do. Acoustic expert Juan Antonio Martinez at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain has developed a system to teach people how to use echolocation, a skill that could be particularly useful for the blind and for people who work under dark or smoky conditions, like firefighters — or cat burglars. "Two hours per day for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you," says Martinez. "Within another couple weeks you can tell the difference between trees and pavement." To master the art of echolocation, you can begin by making the typical "sh" sound used to make someone be quiet. Moving a pen in front of the mouth can be noticed right away similar to the phenomenon when traveling in a car with the windows down, which makes it possible to "hear" gaps in the verge of the road. The next level is to learn how to master "palate clicks," special clicks with your tongue and palate that are better than other sounds because they can be made in a uniform way, work at a lower intensity, and don't get drowned out by ambient noise. With the palate click you can learn to recognize slight changes in the way the clicks sound depending on what objects are nearby. "For all of us in general, this would be a new way of perceiving the world," says Martinez."
Networking

Submission + - Free Wi-Fi for the Residents of Venice, Italy 1

Submitted by pmontra
pmontra writes: The City of Venice, Italy, started to offer free Wi-Fi to residents (Google translation from the Italian source) on July 3 2009. Tourists and other visitors will pay 5 Euros a day for the service starting from September. The hot spots are connected to a ten thousand kilometers (6.250 miles) fiber optic LAN the City started deploying in the '90s. The first day of free Internet access has been celebrated with a digital treasure hunt in the channels of the lagoon city.
Software

Submission + - Sothink Violated the FlashGot GPL and Stole Code

Submitted by ShineTheLight
ShineTheLight writes: People at Sothink decided to violate the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html) by stealing a piece of core code from FlashGot and use it without even the decency of covering their tracks. It is an exact copy of a previous version. This deception came to light when users reported to the FlashGot support forum that their software was not working right. Some digging led to the discovery that the older module that Sothink stole and used verbatim was overriding the more recent engine on the machines of those who had both installed and it was causing the issue. It has been reported to AMO at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=499485 and the developer is aware of it at http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1654&p=6396#p6396 and the Sothink people have completed ignored and been silent on the subject. This is why most good programmers will stop contributing to the global community because there are those who will steal their work, pass it off as their own, never acknowledge or give credit and then shamefully stick their head in the sand and ignore the consequence.
Idle

Submission + - Goatse Mail To Spammer Ends In Police Citation 2

Submitted by Dave
Dave writes: Locally, we have a happy hour event for Information Technology professionals to meet up and have a few drinks. Each month, it is hosted at a different location, and each month a different business sponsors the beer. As part of this event, there is an e-mail sign up for the actual happy hour mailing list to receive information about where the next event takes place and who is sponsoring it. The business where the event took place happened to take their own copy of this list and used it to start e-mailing me about their non-related promotions (Super Bowl, Mardi Gras, etc).

I replied nicely the first time with a title of 'UNSUBSCRIBE', the full original message (including the header showing which e-mail address the message was sent to), and quotes from the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 which says that there must be a clear unsubscribe mechanism (which there was not), and that requests must be honored within 10 days. This past week, I received more promotional materials and replied with an attached image of goatse.

I was contacted today by an officer in reference to "Unlawful Use Of Computerized Communication Systems". I was told that this could be prosecuted under state criminal law but that "since I had cooperated and returned the officer's phone call", I will instead be issued a municipal citation (locally adopted state law, references the same exact legal code 947.0125) for $300.

I fully plan on going to my court date to contest the citation on principle, but I thought maybe some other slashdotters might have had similar experiences or may be able to provide me with some basis on which to fight this.
Government

Submission + - Satirist Gets Three Months; the Judge, Likely More (nytimes.com)

Submitted by ponraul
ponraul writes: When Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, sentenced Hillary Transue, 17, on a harassment charge stemming from a MySpace parody of her high school's assistant principal, Hillary expected to be let off with a stern lecture; instead, the Wilkes-Barre, PA area teen got three months in a commercially operated juvenile detention center. In a reversal of fortune, Ciavarella and, his colleague, Judge Conahan, 56, find themselves trying to plea-bargain a 87 month sentence in Federal correctional facilities relating to a kick-back scheme that netted the pair $2.6 Million and PA Child Care 5000 inmates.
Businesses

Submission + - Restaurant Owners Use Zapper to Cook the Books

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times writes that thanks to a software program called a zapper, even technologically illiterate restaurant and store owners are siphoning cash from computer cash registers to cheat tax officials including a 12-store restaurant chain in Detroit that used a zapper to skim more than $20 million over four years. Zappers — also known as automated sales suppression devices — are a new twist on an old fraud. In the old days, restaurant owners who wanted to cheat on taxes kept two sets of books but because cash registers make automated records, hiding the theft requires getting into the machine's memory and changing that record. The more sophisticated zappers are easy to use: a dialog box shows the day's tally then the thief chooses to take a dollar amount or percentage of the till and the program calculates which orders to erase to get close to the amount of cash the person wants to remove. Richard T. Ainsworth, a Boston University law professor specializing in taxes says only two known zapper cases have been prosecuted in the United States. ""Why aren't cases being identified in the United States? This is my tax money. It makes me mad.""
Google

Submission + - Google Developing ISP Throttling Detector

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Google has been very vocal on its stance for net neutrality. Recently, Richard Whitt — Senior Policy Director for Google — announced that Google will take an even more active role in the debate by arming consumers with the tools to determine first-hand if their broadband connections are being monkeyed with by their ISPs. Google's stance is that if the ISPs won't disclose that information to the public, then consumers should have the tools at hand to determine for themselves what their ISPs are doing."
The Courts

Submission + - SPAM: FTC fines annoying online ad firm record $2.9M

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "It probably won't do away with those annoying "YOU HAVE WON" banner ads but online advertiser ValueClick, today agreed to pay a record $2.9 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that its advertising claims and e-mails were deceptive and violated federal law. Aside from being deceptive and generally annoying, the FTC also charged that ValueClick and its subsidiaries, Hi-Speed Media and E-Babylon failed to secure consumers' sensitive financial information, despite their claims to do so. The FTC alleged the companies published online privacy policies claiming they encrypted customer information, but either failed to encrypt the information at all or used a non-standard and insecure form of encryption. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source

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