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Comment Re:Yes, finally. (Score 1) 425

Get rid of it. Although, I'd prefer if they let us vote on it instead of just a bunch of assholes in brussels.

I remember when they tried this back in the 80s. The public confusion was more than palpable. I would like to see it removed, but at the same time do no look forward to the confusion again.

Security

Submission + - LulzSec suspected arrested by UK police (sophos.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The UK's Police Computer e-Crime Unit (PCeU) has arrested a 19-year-old man in Wickford, Essex, in connection with the series of LulzSec attacks against organizations including the CIA, PBS and Sony.

The man, who has been arrested under the Computer Misuse and Fraud Act, has had his house searched and a significant amount of material taken away by police for forensic examination.

The PCeU worked with local Essex police and the FBI on the investigation.

Microsoft

Submission + - Silverlight Developers Rally Against Windows 8 (itnews.com.au) 1

aesoteric writes: "A legion of Silverlight developers have threatened revolt after Microsoft made no mention of Silverlight or .Net in the vendor's brief video preview for its upcoming Windows 8 operating system. Developers expressed fears Microsoft might let their investment in skills "die on the vine" as Redmond finally embraces open standards. Microsoft, for their part, have told developers they can't say more until September."
The Courts

Submission + - Federal courts to begin first digital video pilot (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: "Federal district courts have been prohibited from allowing any sort of electronic dissemination of trials since 1946, but that is about to change.

Fourteen federal trial courts and 100 judges have been selected to take part in the federal Judiciary's three-year digital video pilot, which will begin July 18 and will go a long way towards determining the effect of cameras in courtrooms."

Privacy

Submission + - School District Hit With New Mac Spying Lawsuit (computerworld.com) 2

CWmike writes: "A former student at a suburban Philadelphia high school has sued his school district for allegedly spying on him and his family using a school-issued Mac laptop, according to court documents. The Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa. was first sued in February 2010 by another student using similar charges. That case, dubbed 'Spygate' in some reports, was settled last October when Lower Merion agreed to pay Blake Robbins $175,000 and cover $425,000 in court costs. On Monday, Joshua Levin, a 2009 graduate of Herriton High, charged the district with violating his civil rights and privacy by remotely activating the notebook's built-in camera to take photographs and screenshots. On Wednesday, Lower Merion spokesman Doug Young called Levin's lawsuit 'solely motivated by monetary interests and a complete waste of the taxpayer's dollars.' Levin begged to differ. According to his lawsuit, Lower Merion used his laptop to take more than 8,000 photographs and screenshots between September 2008 and March 2009. A district report uncovered more than 30,000 photographs and 27,000 screenshots taken. Last June, lawyers made photos and screenshots available for viewing by the 76 affected students. 'Plaintiff opted to view the recovered images, and was shocked, humiliated and severely emotionally distressed at what he saw,' Levin's lawsuit stated."
Security

Submission + - Court:Passwords+Secret Questions=Secure Banking (krebsonsecurity.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A closely-watched court battle over how far commercial banks need to go to protect their customers from cyber theft is nearing an end. Experts said the decision recommended by a magistrate last week — if adopted by a U.S. district court in Maine — will make it more difficult for other victim businesses to challenge the effectiveness of security measures employed by their banks. This case would be the first to add legal precedent to banking industry guidelines about what constitutes "reasonable" security. The tentative decision is that a series of passwords + some device fingerprinting is enough to meet the definition of "something you know" + "something you have". The case has generated enormous discussion over whether the industry's "recommended" practices are anywhere near relevant to today's attacks, in which crooks usually have complete control over the victim's PC
Google

Submission + - Google Redirects Traffic to Avoid Kazakh Demands (wsj.com)

pbahra writes: "Google has rejected attempts by the Kazakh government "to create borders on the web" and has refused a demand to house servers in the country after an official decree that all Internet domains ending with the domain suffix for Kazakhstan ,".kz", be domestically based. Bill Coughran, Google senior vice president said in his blog that from now on, Google will redirect users that visit google.kz to google.com in Kazakh:" We find ourselves in a difficult situation: creating borders on the web raises important questions for us not only about network efficiency but also about user privacy and free expression. If we were to operate google.kz only via servers located inside Kazakhstan, we would be helping to create a fractured Internet." Mr. Coughran said that unfortunately, it would mean that Kazakh users would have a poorer experience as results would no longer be customized for the former Soviet republic."
Microsoft

Submission + - Will Microsoft release its own Windows 8 tablet? (extremetech.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft isn't exactly known for its hardware prowess. Sure, it's churned out plenty of nice mice, keyboards, and game controllers over the years, but success with actual devices has been mixed. The Xbox 360 has exceeded all expectations, while the Zune and Kin hardware have been monumental failures. According to industry sources in Taiwan, however, Microsoft is working on a Windows 8 tablet that will be powered by Texas Instrument's next-generation 1.8GHz dual core processor.

Submission + - Kino.to Raided In Massive Police Operation, Admins (torrentfreak.com)

freedumb2000 writes: Europe just witnessed one of the largest piracy-related busts in history with the raid of the popular movie streaming portal Kino.to. More than a dozen people connected to the site were arrested after police officers in Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands raided several residential addresses and data centers. Kino.to hosted no illicit content itself, but indexed material stored on file-hosters and other streaming services.
Idle

Submission + - Dr. J.T. Kirk. Shatner Accepts D.Litt Degree (google.com)

theshowmecanuck writes: William Shatner was granted a Doctor of Letters Degree at his alma mater, McGill University in Montreal. One of the more interesting parts of his speech involved his high school principal's car which was set on fire. An other interesting tidbit is that he doesn't really like the idea of going into space himself. An interesting short read on what made and continues to make one of our favourite former 'star ship captains' tick.

Submission + - Integrating Capacitors into Car Frames 1

necro81 writes: It has long been recognized that adding capacitors in parallel with batteries can improve the performance of hybrid and electric vehicles by accepting and supplying spikes of power, which reduces stress on the battery pack, extending range and improving cycle life. But where to put them, when batteries already compete for space? A new research prototype from Imperial College London has integrated them into the body panels and structural frame of the vehicle itself. In their prototype, carbon fiber serves as both the structure for the vehicle and electrode for the energy storage sandwiched within.

Submission + - Is SHA-512 the way to go?

crutchy writes: When I was setting up my secure website I got really paranoid about SSL encryption, so I created a certificate using OpenSLL for SHA-512 encryption. I don't know much about SHA (except bits that I can remember from Wikipedia), but I figure that if you're going to go to the trouble (or expense) of setting up SSL, you may as well go for the best you can get, right? Also, what would be the minimum level of encryption required for say online banking? I've read about how SHA-1 was "broken", but from what I can tell it still takes many hours. What is the practical risk to the real internet from this capability? Would a sort of rolling key be a possible next step, where each SSL-encrypted stream has its own private/public key pair generated on the fly, and things like passwords and bank account numbers were broken up and sent in multiple streams with different private/public key pairs? This would of course require more server grunt to generate these keys (or we could take a leaf from Google's book and just have separate server clusters designed solely for that job), but then if computing performance was a limiting factor, the threat to security of these hashes wouldn't be a problem in the first place. I guess with all security infrastructure, trust becomes a more important factor than technical abilities. Can I trust that my SSL provider hasn't been hacked (or at least snooped)? How do I know some disgruntled IT admin hasn't sold the private key of his company's root CA to the same organisation that developed the conficker virus? It would certainly make for a more profitable payload. I've read some of Bruce Schneier's work (I'm subscribed to Cryptogram) and he tends to highlight the FUD that surrounds internet security, and I agree that there is a lot of FUD, but complete ignorance and blase attitude toward security can also be taken advantage of. Where is the middle ground?

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