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Comment Re:Quis ipsos custodiet custodes? (Score 1) 697

by commodore64_love (#31085958) Attached to: Appeals Court Rules On Internet Obscenity Standards

>>>The very reason we HAVE a SCOTUS is to protect the individuals from majority abuse.

But the SCOTUS is part of the U.S. Government. It often acts like a rubberstamp for the Congress and the Executive branches, and when it doesn't rubberstamp, then the president sometimes threatens the court (see FDR and the Court-packing Scandal).

The U.S. Government should not be self-policing itself. That's why it's necessary to have an independent party, i.e. the States, be granted the ability to nullify unconstitutional laws. They created the Constitution - they ought to have at least some power to enforce it and nullify unconstitutional laws - just like any other binding contract.
Technology

Submission + - Remus: Xen gets transparent high availability. (cs.ubc.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Remus project has just been incorporated into the Xen hypervisor. Developed at the University of British Columbia, Remus provides a thin layer that continuously replicates a running virtual machine onto a second physical host. Remus requires no modifications to the OS or applications within the protected VM: on failure, Remus activates the replica on the second host, and the VM simply picks up where the original system died. Open TCP connections remain in tact, and applications continue to run unaware of the failure. It's pretty fun to yank the plug out on your web server and see everything continue to tick along. This sort of HA has traditionally required either really expensive hardware, or very complex and invasive modifications to applications and OSes.
IT

Submission + - Metasploit Project Sold (darkreading.com)

Submitted by ancientribe
ancientribe writes: The wildly popular open-source Metasploit penetration testing tool project has been sold to Rapid7, a vulnerability management vendor, paving the way for a commercial version of Metasploit to eventually hit the market. HD Moore, creator of Metasploit, was hired by Rapid7 and will continue heading up the project. This is big news for the indie Metasploit Project, which now gets full-time resources, which Moore says will translate into faster turnaround for new features. Just what a commercial Metasploit product will look like is still in the works, but Rapid7 expects to keep the Metasploit penetration testing tool as a separate product with "high integration" into Rapid7's vulnerability management products.
Security

Submission + - Schneier: We need better un-authentication (threatpost.com)

Submitted by
Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: "Bruce Schenier writes on Threatpost.com: In computer security, a lot of effort is spent on the authentication problem. Whether it is passwords, secure tokens, secret questions, image mnemonics, or something else, engineers are continually coming up with more complicated — and hopefully more secure — ways for you to prove you are who you say you are over the Internet. This is important stuff, as anyone with an online bank account or remote corporate network knows. But a lot less thought and work have gone into the other end of the problem: how do you tell the system on the other end of the line that you are no longer there? How do you unauthenticate yourself? My home computer requires me to log out or turn my computer off when I want to unauthenticate. This works for me because I know enough to do it, but lots of people just leave their computer on and running when they walk away. As a result, many office computers are left logged in when people go to lunch, or when they go home for the night. This, obviously, is a security vulnerability."
The Almighty Buck

Up To 90 Percent of US Money Has Traces of Cocaine 441

Posted by CmdrTaco from the having-more-fun-than-me dept.
mmmscience writes "Scientists have found that up to 90% of US paper money has some cocaine contamination, up from the 67% mark measured two years ago. Looking at bills from 17 cities, it's no surprise that the city with the highest level was Washington DC, where up to 95% of bills gathered there tested positive. From a global standpoint, both Canada and Brazil tested rather high (85% and 80%, respectively), but China and Japan were well behind the curve at 20% and 12%. The researchers hope that studies such as these will be of help to law enforcement agencies that are attempting to understand the growth and flow of drug use in communities."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Does powerline networking nuke radio hams? (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Since writing about the success he's had with powerline networking, a number of readers emailed PC Pro's Paul Ockendon to castigate him for recommending these products, such as HomePlug. They were all amateur radio enthusiasts, claiming the products affect their hobby in much the same way that urban lighting affects amateur astronomers, but rather than causing light pollution they claim powerline networking causes radio pollution in the HF band (otherwise known as shortwave). Paul's follow-up feature, "Does powerline networking nuke radio hams?" documents his investigation into these claims, which found evidence to support both sides of an intriguing debate."
The Courts

Chapter 11 Trustee Appointed For SCO 89

Posted by timothy from the why-not-a-trusty-instead dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The judge overseeing the SCO Chapter 11 bankruptcy case has issued an order appointing a chapter 11 trustee to oversee SCO's operations. However, the judge's reasoning is far from clear. While the judge believes that SCO has 'abandoned rehabilitation' to bet its future on litigation, he doesn't think it appropriate to convert their case to Chapter 7 liquidation. So SCO's management hasn't been fired yet, but they're no longer fully in charge either. It's not clear why the bankruptcy judge opted for this solution, when even the US Trustee was pushing to fire SCO's management and convert the case to Chapter 7. In short, SCO is still only mostly dead, rather than all dead, and in desperate search of a miracle worker."

Comment SAS 70 (Score 1) 480

by AustinFloyd (#28957433) Attached to: Can We Abandon Confidentiality For Google Apps?
The only main issue with SAS 70 audits is that the company/process being audited defines the scope of the audit. You can choose to not report processes, systems, or users involved, and the auditing company will only cover the scope you've set forth. IMHO SAS 70 is nowhere close to a comprehensive auditing tool for SOx or HIPAA compliance.
The Internet

New Service Converts Torrents Into PNG Images 297

Posted by Soulskill from the pretty-useful-pictures dept.
jamie points out that a new web service, hid.im, will encode a torrent into a PNG image file, allowing it to be shared easily through forums or image hosting sites. Quoting TorrentFreak: "We have to admit that the usefulness of the service escaped us when we first discovered the project. So, we contacted Michael Nutt, one of the people running the project to find out what it's all about. 'It is an attempt to make torrents more resilient,' Michael told [us]. 'The difference is that you no longer need an indexing site to host your torrent file. Many forums will allow uploading images but not other types of files.' Hiding a torrent file inside an image is easy enough. Just select a torrent file stored on your local hard drive and Hid.im will take care the rest. The only limit to the service is that the size of the torrent file cannot exceed 250KB. ... People on the receiving end can decode the images and get the original .torrent file through a Firefox extension or bookmarklet. The code is entirely open source and Michael Nutt told us that they are hoping for people to contribute to it by creating additional decoders supported by other browsers."

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