Cyraan - Slashdot User

Submission + - Court: Cops Can Steal and Lie to Conduct Searches (lawbean.com)

Submitted by

Spamicles

on Friday June 08, 2007 @05:59PM

Spamicles writes: "Police officers faked a car jacking in order to search a car that was suspected to be used in drug trafficking. They discovered drugs and arrested the owners of the car. A lower court ruled that the warrant-less search and seizure violated the Fourth Amendment and that the drugs could not be used as evidence. This ruling was overturned today."

Submission + - Jerry Falwell

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @02:49PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "NPR and BBC are reporting Jerry Falwell's death. Question: Is it alright to be happy that someone so divisive and so bent on mixing religion and politics in an "us vs. them" way is dead?"

Submission + - HD-DVD processing key and massive censorship

Submitted by

Rudd-O

on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @01:09PM

Rudd-O writes: "After successful discovery of the HD-DVD processing key, massive unprecedented amounts of censorship, in the form of DMCA takedown notices (by the MPAA), have begun to circulate around the Internet. For example, Spooky Action at a Distance was killed. More disturbingly, my story got Dugg twice, with the second wave hitting 15.500 votes, and today I found out it had simply disappeared from Digg. How long until the long arm of the MPAA gets to my own site (run in Ecuador) and the rest of them holding the processing key? How long will we let rampant censorhip go, in the name of economic interest?"

Submission + - Google "airbrushes" Katrina history

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31, 2007 @01:49PM

An anonymous reader writes: Google using pre-Katrina satellite pictures of New Orleans. Not clear when it switched from images with storm damage. House panel calls change an "injustice" to storm's victims. Google says it switched to images with improved detail.

Submission + - 48% of Americans reject Evolution

Submitted by on Saturday March 31, 2007 @01:42PM

An anonymous reader writes: There's an interesting if insane survey at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17879317/site/newsweek / — Given a straightforward question if evolution was "well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community," 48% of Americans said "no." Furthermore, 34% of college graduates said they accept the Biblical story of creation as fact.

Submission + - How to Turn A Music Lover to Piracy

Submitted by

dugn

on Tuesday March 20, 2007 @04:47PM

dugn writes: "The Consumerist (consumerist.com) is running a story about how a run of the mill (read non-tech-savvy) music lover was pushed to become a pirate. http://consumerist.com/consumer/drm/how-i-became-a -music-pirate-245644.php A simple good piece that shows how the end user experience of DRM is starting to get needed traction in more blogs and mainstream web sites."

Submission + - EFF forces DMCA abuser to apologize

Submitted by

destinyland

on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @05:23PM

destinyland writes: "The EFF just announced victory over a serial abuser of DMCA copyright notices. To set an example, their settlement required Michael Crook to record a video apology to the entire internet for interfering with free speech. He's also required to withdraw every bogus DMCA notice, and refrain from future bogus notices, never contest the original image again, and take a remedial class on copyright law. He'd attempted to use flaws in the DMCA to censor an embarrassing picture of himself that he just didn't want appearing online — but instead the whole thing backfired."

Submission + - Bush administration again stifles scientists.

Submitted by niloroth on Sunday March 11, 2007 @02:21PM

niloroth writes: The Independent Online Reports on a leaked memorandum from the US Department of the Interior instructing members of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to refrain from mentioning climate change, sea ice, or polar bears in their trips to countries the arctic region. Following other such attempts by this administration to control either scientists connected with the government, or the results of those scientists, is there any hope for the next few years? Or is this just how it will be in the future no matter who is in power? Is the mix of science and government funding just too volatile?

Submission + - Justice Department Says FBI Misused Patriot Act

Submitted by on Friday March 09, 2007 @12:13PM

An anonymous reader writes: In a report just released by the Justice Department, as predicted by many including those on Slashdot, the FBI has misused and abused the PATRIOT Act to illegally gain access to information about people living in the United States.

From the article:
FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to a 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

..."we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities," the audit concludes.

Submission + - Scientists Break Speed of Light

Submitted by PreacherTom on Monday March 05, 2007 @06:25PM

PreacherTom writes: Scientists at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, NJ are reporting that they have broken the speed of light. For the experiment, the researchers manipulated a vapor of laser-irradiated atoms, causing a pulse that shoots about 300 times faster than it would take the pulse to go the same distance in a vacuum, to the point where the pulse seemed to exit the chamber before even entering it. Apparently, Uncle Albert is still resting comfortably: relativity only states that an object with mass cannot travel faster than light. Still, the results are sufficient to merit publication in the prestigious journal, Nature.

Submission + - U.S. Senators Threaten Canada Over Movie Piracy

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05, 2007 @01:22PM

An anonymous reader writes: Michael Geist reports that U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and John Corwyn have written an angry letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to complain about alleged Canadian movie piracy. The Senators rehash discredited claims about the extent and impact of camcording, bizzarely taking credit for the elimination of camcording in the U.S. due to their legislation.

Submission + - Final AACS key found

Submitted by julie-h on Sunday March 04, 2007 @01:52PM

julie-h writes: The PowerDVD AACS private key for playing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD's have been found. This was the last key needed. What does this mean? We don't have to sniff/snoop Volume IDs anymore. We can create a program that can decrypt (or play if you will) a disc without any need for WinDVD or PowerDVD. So no sniffing/extracting of keys anymore. And more over: it can work on all platforms... In other words: we can make our own independent, user friendly player (or decrypter).

Submission + - Analog TV cards banned by FCC as of yesterday

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Friday March 02, 2007 @08:05PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Beginning yesterday, the FCC requirement went in to effect that 'All TV receiving devices sold must possess the capability of supporting digital television signals.' NVidia has already discontinued their fairly new and very popular DualTV MCE (http://www.nvidia.com/page/dualtvmce.html) card, and soon all Non-ATSC cards will be gone from shelves and available only on Ebay."

Submission + - "Conservapedia" claims to fight Wikipedia

Submitted by

Ellis D. Tripp

on Friday March 02, 2007 @07:46PM

Ellis D. Tripp writes: "A group of religious right activists has launched "Conservapedia" in an attempt to counter the perceived "liberal bias" in the Wikipedia. A few examples of the "corrections":

Dinosaurs
Wikipedia
"Vertebrate animals that dominated terrestrial ecosystems for over 160m years, first appearing approximately 230m years ago."

Conservapedia
"They are mentioned in numerous places throughout the Good Book. For example, the behemoth in Job and the leviathan in Isaiah are almost certainly references to dinosaurs."

US Democratic party
Wikipedia
"The party advocates civil liberties, social freedoms, equal rights, equal opportunity, fiscal responsibility, and a free enterprise system tempered by government intervention."

Conservapedia
"The Democrat voting record reveals a true agenda of cowering to terrorism, treasonous anti-Americanism, and contempt for America's founding principles."

Article here:

http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breakin g_news/breaking_news__international_news/&articlei d=300812

Site here:

http://www.conservapedia.com/"

Submission + - Microsoft Outlaws 3rd Party IM Clients

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @11:14PM

An anonymous reader writes: With the latest update to the MSN Instant Messenger client, now called Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft has required all users to sign a new contract which among other things forbids the use of 3rd party instant messenger clients to connect to the MSN messenger service, such as the AJAX Meebo client, Gaim, and Trillian among others. Worth noting, they do provide a list of authorized 3rd party clients, such as Yahoo Messenger, that are allowed access to the service.

Excerpt: "In using the service, you may not use any unauthorized third party software or service to access the Microsoft instant messaging network currently known as the .NET Messenger service."

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