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Government

Submission + - Comcast-NBC Deal Accidentally Protects Internet (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "Details of the conditions that the Department of Justice required to approve Comcast's purchase of NBC have emerged today. Blogger Kevin Fogarty looks at the details — Comcast is forbidden from blocking Netflix over its pipes, and must sell NBC shows via iTunes and other similar services — and concludes that Internet access for everybody, including business users, has been protected, more or less by accident."

Submission + - Betty Boop and Indefinite Copyright (cartoonbrew.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: US Court of Appeals officially recognizes that under the current regime, characters like Betty Boopy "would essentially never enter the public domain".

"Apparently the Fleischer estate has lost a court battle for the rights to Betty Boop, a character created by Grim Natwick at Max Fleischer’s studio in 1930."

"The Fleischer Studio tried to sue Avela Inc. over its licensing of public domain Betty Boop poster images (for handbags and T-shirts). The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (based in San Francisco) ruled against the Fleischers, saying in their decision, “If we ruled that AVELA’s depictions of Betty Boop infringed Fleischer’s trademarks, the Betty Boop character would essentially never enter the public domain.”"

"So where does that leave Ms. Boop? No longer represented by the heirs of Max Fleischer and King Features Syndicate? Does this make Harvey Comics – or by extention, its current owner Classic Media – the owner of the property? Or is the character now in public domain."
Security

Submission + - Google Releases a Tutorial for Hackers 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: ""Learn how hackers find security vulnerabilities and exploit web applications!" as the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Google has released Jarlsberg, a "small, cheesy" web application specifically designed to be full of bugs and security flaws as a security tutorial for coders and encourages programmers to try their hands at exploiting weaknesses in Jarlsberg as a way of teaching them how to avoid similar vulnerabilities in their own code. Jarlsberg has multiple security bugs ranging from cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery, to information disclosure, denial of service, and remote code execution. The codelab is organized by types of vulnerabilities. In black box hacking, users try to find security bugs by experimenting with the application and manipulating input fields and URL parameters, trying to cause application errors, and looking at the HTTP requests and responses to guess server behavior while in white-box hacking, users have access to the source code and can use automated or manual analysis to identify bugs. The tutorial notes that accessing or attacking a computer system without authorization is illegal in many jurisdictions but while doing this codelab, users are specifically granted authorization to attack the Jarlsberg application as directed."
The Internet

Submission + - Pressure mounts on Icann to approve .xxx domain (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An application for the .xxx domain was first submitted six years ago. Icann approved the application in 2005, and entered into an agreement with ICM Registry regarding technical and commercial terms. However, Icann reversed its decision in March 2007. An independent review panel was called to look into why Icann had changed its mind, and concluded that the body had been under pressure from the US government. Now the registry that submitted that application, ICM Registry, is pushing for .xxx to be approved. The company has argued that the .xxx internet domain should be approved for porn site use, allowing parents and businesses to easily configure browsers or filters to automatically block sites that carry the domain.

Comment Re:PowerPoint makes us stupid (Score 2, Insightful) 233

by hey! (#32008172) Attached to: PowerPoint of Afghan War Strategy

My presentation philosophy: the presentation is NOT the powerpoint document. It's me talking in a way that makes a point.

The powerpoint is there to give them something more interesting to look at than me, to help them keep track of what point we're on, and sometimes to provide an illustration or diagram.

If I have to alter what I'm going to say so it can fit powerpoint slides, I'll just hand out a stack of bumperstickers.

Comment Re:wagging the dog (Score 1) 840

by the_womble (#31995296) Attached to: Pope Rails Against the Internet and Transparency

Everyone else covered up sexual abuse as well: governments, families schools. Here is one example I happen to have read about before

The main difference between the church and other organisations that have done the same seem to be:

1) The press are more interested in covering church scandals.
2) The people responsible for the cover-ups by the church are made to resign when caught, those in government get away with it.
Security

Submission + - New Russian weapon hides in shipping container

Submitted by shmG
shmG writes: A Russian company is marketing a devastating new cruise missile system which can be hidden inside a shipping container, giving any merchant vessel the capability to wipe out an aircraft carrier. Potential customers for the formidable Club-K system include Kremlin allies Iran and Venezuela, say defense experts. They worry that countries could pass on the satellite-guided missiles, which are very hard to detect, to terrorist groups.

This is a scary new development in the global arms-race that allows for the proliferation of cruise missiles to anyone who would pay for it — even terrorists. This could be the next big thing in strategic weapons as they can appear anywhere there is a container ship. The company even made a commercial and posted it onto the Internet

Submission + - Hacking Big Brother with help from Revlon (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by skids
skids writes: All those futuristic full-face eyeliner jobs in distopian cyberpunk fiction might not be that far off the mark. A New York University student spent his thesis time exploring computer vision technology (OpenCV) for ways in which one could confound first-stage algorithms that initially lock onto faces. Then he mixed in a bit of fashion sense to predict future geek chic. Now, whether you want to go for the coal-miner look just to stay out of the data mine, that's up to you...
Emulation (Games)

Submission + - Emulation for preservation of digital artifacts (theatlantic.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Author Salman Rushdie donated his papers and notes to Emory University a while ago. Not surprisingly, many of Rushdie's original notes, drafts, and correspondence existed in electronic form. Rather than printing them out or converting them to other formats, archivists at the university created an emulated image of Rushdie's old computer, complete with old software. Researchers visiting the archive can read his email in Eudora and his Stickies notes, or read drafts of his books in ClarisWorks. When you leave your legacy to future generations, would you like a virtualized copy of your personal system to be included?
Robotics

Robots To Clear the Baltic Seafloor of WW-II Mines 286

Posted by kdawson from the booming-business dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A Russian company is building a massive natural gas pipeline that will run across the Baltic Sea floor. But first, they must clear some of the 150,000 unexploded bombs sitting at the bottom of the sea, left there by the Russian and German armies in the 1940s. About 70 of these mines, each filled with 300 kg of explosive charge, sit in the pipeline's path, mostly in its northern section just south of Finland. And so the company contracted to remove the mines is bringing in robots to do the dirty work. Here's how it will work: A research ship deploys the robot to the seabed, where it identifies the exact location of the explosive. After sounding a warning to surrounding ship traffic, scaring fish away using a small explosive, and then emitting a 'seal screamer' of high intensity noises designed to make the area around the blast quite uncomfortable for marine mammals, Bactec's engineers erupt a 5 kg blast, forcing the mine to detonate. This process ensures the safety of humans plus any animals living in the surrounding environment. The operation concludes with the robot being redeployed to clear up the scrap of the now-destroyed bomb."

Feed Wired: Darpa Looks to Build Real-Life C3P0 (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
Right now, troops trying to listen in on enemy chatter rely on a convoluted process, prone to garbled words and missed phrases. What soldiers really need is a machine that can pick out voices from the noise, understand and translate all kinds of different languages, and then identify the voice from a hit list of "wanted speakers." A real-life version of Star Wars' protocol droid C3PO, in other words.



Image

Measuring the Speed of Light With Valentine's Day Chocolate 126

Posted by samzenpus from the speed-of-the-sound-of-loneliness dept.
Cytotoxic writes "What to do with all of those leftover Valentine's Day chocolates? — a common problem for the Slashdot crowd. The folks over at Wired magazine have an answer for you in a nice article showing how to measure the speed of light with a microwave and some chocolate. A simple yet surprisingly accurate method that can be used to introduce the scientific method to children and others in need of a scientific education."

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