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Comment This title had so much potential (Score 1) 116

by DeathOfScythes (#23123298) Attached to: Cybersecurity and Piracy on the High Seas
I read the title and hoped that the story was about lax cybersecurity alowing pirates (the real, ak-47 wielding kind) to know which ships held the most valuble cargo and acting on the information. Images of third world crackers typing at a beat up terminal and finding their way into teh database of shipping companies, followed by the whitehat on the other end redirecting them to the coordinants of the local navy.

I watch too many bad movies.
Music

Gene Simmons Blames College Kids For Music Industry Woes 860

Posted by CowboyNeal from the pointing-fingers dept.
drcagn writes "Gene Simmons has blasted 'college' kids and claims that they have destroyed the music industry, with the labels also to blame for not properly suing them out of existence when they had the chance. When asked about Radiohead and Trent Reznor's recent support of a different direction in music distribution, he says "that's not a business model that works. I open a store and say 'Come on in and pay whatever you want.' Are you on f---ing crack?" When asked about music being free and making money off of merchandise, he says, "The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care?" even though earlier in the interview he brags that he believes that KISS's merchandise is more profitable than Elvis's or the Beatles.'"
Portables

Which Lost/Stolen Laptop Trackers Do You Like? 572

Posted by Zonk from the come-back-vorpal dept.
saudadelinux writes "I was held up at gunpoint in July, and my laptop was stolen. There are companies out there which, for a fee, install tracker software on your laptop. If it's stolen or lost, they track its whereabouts whenever it gets on the 'Net and work with local law enforcement and ISPs to find the machine. I'm wondering: has anyone used one of these services? Does anyone have a recommendation for which company to go with? My new laptop is a a dual-boot Ubuntu/XP machine, and the couple of companies I've looked at do Windows-only. Are there Linux options?"
Politics

Why Are So Many Nerds Libertarians? 1565

Posted by kdawson from the out-of-left-field dept.
BrendanMcGrail writes "Why do so many nerds seem to lean toward the Libertarian end of the spectrum? As a leftist, I know there are many people who share my ideological views, but have very little in common with me in terms of profession and non-work interests. Is the community's political bent directly tied to our higher than average economic success?"

Case of the Great Hot-Site Swap 119

Posted by Zonk from the collaboration-makes-things-easier-you-don't-say dept.
BobB writes "Two universities — Bowdoin in Maine and Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles — have entered a unique arrangement under which they are backing up each other's web sites, email and servers on different ends of the continent. They say this could be a disaster recovery model all sorts of organizations could follow. From the article: 'When Bowdoin switched over to Exchange e-mail, so the schools would have similar e-mail infrastructure, LMU staffers were their guides and advisers. "We implemented that pretty quickly," says Davis, the Bowdoin CIO. "When we launched Exchange, we had just eight calls to our help desk." And the shared experience of the infrastructure components then forms a kind of informal help desk, where managers and staff can reach out for advice, brainstorm and troubleshoot problems with their colleagues a continent away.'"

Kids Say Email is Dead 444

Posted by Zonk from the they-don't-get-as-much-as-i-do dept.
An anonymous reader writes "'E-mail is, like, soooo dead' is the headline at News.com, where a piece looks at youth attitudes towards communication mediums. A group of teenage internet business entrepreneurs confessed that they really only use email to 'talk to adults'. Primarily, these folks are using social networks to communicate. 'More and more, social networks are playing a bigger role on the cell phone. In the last six to nine months, teens in the United States have taken to text messaging in numbers that rival usage in Europe and Asia. According to market research firm JupiterResearch, 80 percent of teens with cell phones regularly use text messaging. Catherine Cook, the 17-year-old founder and president of MyYearbook.com, was the lone teen entrepreneur who said she still uses e-mail regularly to keep up with camp friends or business relationships. Still, that usage pales in comparison to her habit of text messaging. She said she sends a thousand text messages a month.'"
Portables

OLPC Used to Browse Porn 338

Posted by CowboyNeal from the extracurricular-activities dept.
youthoftoday writes "The OLPC project to bring the internet to third world has worked well — too well, it seems. Yahoo reports that Nigerian Children are already using the OLPC to browse for porn." This is why as kids we couldn't look at National Geographic issues without being supervised. A rep from OLPC said, understandably, that the laptops would now be fitted with filters.
Programming

Are 80 Columns Enough? 763

Posted by Zonk from the good-enough-for-government-work dept.
ThinkGeek writes "Dating back to the venerable DEC VT100, the 80 column terminal has served us well for over 25 years. Even now, many open source projects and common conventions require lines of code and documentation to fit on that terminal. I am not alone, judging by code I've seen in and out of the open source world, in finding that number insufficient for coding, much less more verbose writing. Given that modern graphical displays (and all popular editors) are capable of far more, is it time we came up with a new standard-sized terminal? If so, what should the new standard be?"
The Internet

Submission + - Maine First State to Pass Net Neutrality (www.lawbehttp)

Submitted by Spamicles
Spamicles writes: Maine has become the first state in the union to pass legislation on net neutrality. The resolution, LD 1675, recognizes the importance of "full, fair and non-discriminatory access to the Internet" and instructs the Public Advocate to study what can be done to protect the rights of Maine internet users. A 2005 decision by the Federal Communications Commission put net neutrality principles, ones that had been in place since the inception of the internet, in jeopardy.
Sci-Fi

Using Technology to Enhance Humans 293

Posted by Zonk from the now-entering-transhuman-space dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "It's a well-known fact that technology can improve our lives. For example, we can reach anyone and anywhere with our cellphones. And people who can't walk after an accident now can have smart prosthesis to help them. But what about designing our children on a computer or having a chip inside our brain to answer our email messages? Are we ready for such a future? In 'Robo-quandary,' the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that many researchers are working on the subject. And as a professor of neuroscience said, "We can grow neurons on silicone plates; we can make the blind see; the deaf hear; we can read minds." So will all we become cyborgs one day?"
Censorship

Own Your Own 128-Bit Integer 477

Posted by kdawson from the anyone-can-play dept.
Byte Swapper writes "After all the fuss over the AACS trying to censor a certain 128-bit number that now has something over two million hits on Google, the folks at Freedom to Tinker would like to point out that you too can own your own integer. They've set up a script that will generate a random number, encrypt a copyrighted haiku with it, and then deed the number back to you. You won't get a copyright on the number or the haiku, but your number has become an illegal circumvention device under the DMCA, such that anyone subject to US law caught distributing it can be punished under the DMCA's anti-trafficking section, for which the DMCA's Safe Harbor provisions do not apply. So F9090211749D5BE341D8C5565663C088 is truly mine now, and you can pry it out of my cold, dead fingers!"
Censorship

EFF and Dvorak Blame the Digg Revolt On Lawyers 262

Posted by kdawson from the jet-fuel-on-a-fire dept.
enharmonix writes "A bit of an update on the recent Digg revolt over AACS. The NYTimes has taken notice and written quite a decent article that actually acknowledges that the take-down notices amount to censorship and documents instances of the infamous key appearing in purely expressive form. I was pleased to see the similarity to 2600 and deCSS was not lost on the Times either. More interesting is that the EFF's Fred von Lohmann blames the digg revolt on lawyers. And in an opinion piece, John Dvorak expands on that theme."

The World's Longest Carbon Nanotube 142

Posted by Zonk from the woot-nanohair-different-color-every-week dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "As you probably know, carbon nanotubes have very interesting mechanical, electrical and optical properties. The problem, currently, is that they're too small (relatively speaking) to be of much use. Now, researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have developed a process to build extremely long aligned carbon nanotube arrays. They've been able to produce 18-mm-long carbon nanotubes which might be spun into nanofibers. Such electrically conductive fibers could one day replace copper wires. The researchers say their nanofibers could be used for applications such as nanomedicine, aerospace and electronics."

Feed Male And Female Brain Patterns Differ During Reaching (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Men's and women's brains "fire" differently when they are planning how to reach for something, so rehabilitation after brain injuries such as strokes may need to be tailored to the sex of the person, says a new study. Researchers found differences in patterns of brain activity in men and women preparing to do visually-guided actions related to tasks such as using a computer mouse or driving a car.

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